Jesus I dont even know where to start. Do you even live in America??

> I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated.

Because most people do not like when bunch of geeks are laughing at their pillow talk or sex talk with wife over the phone? Because we have a right to privacy, like most human beings..?

> These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case.

And you know this because of what??

> Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs.
Just exactly what was the last time you heard government proudly announcing they were able to stop a pathogens spread attack? Or nuclear weapon being recovered? Give me a break! They couldn't even stop two morans with pressure cookers in Boston and you trying to tell me they will track some pathogens that vanished from a lab??

> Ok, but no one here is going to argue that stopping terrorism is bad: the problem is in how we define terrorism.
How about this: terrorism is when you secretly drone a group of people in Afganistan and as a "collateral damage" you kill some 8 year old boy. Then his father happen to build up anger against americans, board a plane and walk to Times Square to detonate his vest. He is a terrorist, right? I mean, you barely heard about some children being droned by accident, and then you have Manning facing possible capital punishment for releasing materials like Apache "mistake" attack on civilians. But sure you will hear about that fanatic detonating on us soil.
You want to stop terrorism? Fine! Immidiately withdraw ALL troops from ALL foreign soils: Iraq, Afganistan, everywhere where americans are sticking their nose where it doesn't belong to! How on earth are they protecting us soil by occupying Iraq, for crying out loud?? Once you stop invading countries, dronning innocent people, you will all of sudden see nobody cares about coming to america and blowing themselves up.

> It's important to remember that we still have a functioning democracy.
No we don't. Money buys power, power buys money. When you big and powerful enough, you are innocent regardless of charges. You are "too big to fail", or other crap. You are given billions of tax payers money to survive while others bankrupt. Democracy ended in 60s.

> If you -- Hacker News reader -- decided to run for congress tomorrow, you might not win, but you won't be killed, sabotaged, or secretly blocked.
Oh okay so for that reason let's stop the human kind progress here and just gave up everything because since we are not following example of some African countries, then everything will always be fine.

> While some individual politicans may be corrupt, the system broadly is not.
How about this: while system broadly is corrupt, some individual politicans are not.

> These programs are enforcement mechanisms; the laws themselves are still made by the people,
No they are not. They are made by entities; government entities. You watch news lately? Bengatzi 9 months later - no answers, no one guilty, no one brought to justice, Rice promoted. Fast and Furious - One US marschall dead -- noone found guilty, noone brought to justice, IRS -- same story plus individual taking 5th. People in government ARE NOT accountable and until this changes up to bringing criminal charges (against people like the one in charge of lavish $50MM spending at IRS), noone will care or be scared!

> While we as a population may argue about social issues like gay marriage and abortion, our government is not fascist.
Read the definition on Wikipedia. We are in fact very close to it.