Wow. Okay, for starters, all of my hypotheticals aren't hypotheticals. They're REAL. The names have been changed, but I do have a couple of friends who are Moroccan and Iranian, and he is an Islamic scholar at Georgetown. I didn't email him about Koran questions last time because he is on the no-fly list just for being from Morocco. I do have a Russian friend who has to keep her nose clean because her mother does fly back and forth from the US and Russia (and Uzbekistan, which is another can of worms - I mean, Russia's one thing but Uzbekistan is one of the places we practice Extraordinary Rendition).

For another thing, you have Scotty the NSA agent saving Ben the depressed kid because his parents, his teachers, his guidance counselor, his friends and Ben are all incapable of doing so. I'd send you an article, but I'll just link to the intro to make a point of how ridiculous this is. our world is not full of friendly childhood counselors who work for the NSA, and it never will be - remember, the NSA has no domestic charter. They can't legally spy on Americans using American communication channels (but they do). Meanwhile, the practical effect of your Ben'n'Scotty chestnut is that Scotty works for the Division of Thoughtcrime and Ben just practiced a conscribed search. And now, in a zero-tolerance universe, he's expelled.

For looking up a gun.

That his father owns.

So - you've spun Orwell into a Rockwell and I'm reporting real things that my real friends deal with in the real world. Tell me where the equivalency is?

Let's take another step back and point out the elephant you're sweeping under the rug - CONSENT. Suppose Ben's dad wants to monitor his son's web searches. He can. Suppose Ben's school wants to monitor Ben's facebook account. They can. Suppose Ben's counselor wants to track Ben's web usage while at school. She can. Hey - suppose Ben's school wants to give Ben a free laptop to do his work on - they can monitor his fucking face while he masturbates. All this shit is available NOW and it happens. But somewhere in there, somebody said "yes, check up on my kid" even if it was a EULA for using the school computer.

The above is called "monitoring" and it's an opt in. The discussion at hand is called SURVEILLANCE and it's performed on hostiles.

I don't get your point. The entire argument is about intent, and your argument is "sometimes people are altruistic."

Altruistic people ask permission.

I think you need to bone up on what "informed consent" "surveillance" and "monitoring" mean. Because we're not talking about WebMD keeping tabs on your aspirin supply, we're talking about an autonomous organization that reports only to the executive who spies on girlfriends, spouses and friends so much they have an acronym for it.