I can't help but hark back to a thread I saw on r/austin once. We have a pretty big problem with bikers getting killed in hit and runs by drunks on late weekends. The anti-surveillance argument went like this: "These bikers know the risks of biking at night on the weekend, and maybe they should stop doing it." The pro-surveillance argument was: "Let's use existing data sets and patterns to identify the most dangerous intersections in downtown Austin, where this most frequently happens, and stick some cameras at license plate angles." The anti-surveillance counterargument was: "It won't stop there." Bikers were dying in the present tense, and civil liberties were being threatened in the future tense. Everywhere I encounter the surveillance discussion, that's where it goes. Every time. Present safety weighed against the threat against future privacy*. Now, I agree with you. Our civil liberties are what make America a good place to live; they're our national treasure without a doubt. But "privacy" and "liberty" are dangerous catch-all rebuttals that grab attention and make headlines. It doesn't, for example, make sense to restrict your friends' flight abilities. It does, however, make sense to use cameras to stop hit and run car accidents. Unfortunately, the same principle is argued in both cases, with detrimental effects in the long term to both. *I'm not sure it's possible to objectively make this call.
You aren't making an argument. You're using a non-equivalent parable and attempting to illustrate that there are two sides to the coin. You are wrong on many fronts, allow me to list them for you. 1) Putting a camera up in a public place is not at all equivalent to snooping in someone's email. There is no right to privacy in a public place. This is why people are allowed to take photos there. This is why traffic cams exist. This is why we have the freedom to peacefully assemble. Comparing a traffic camera to NSA surveillance is sophistry. 2) Observing a hit and run is not going to prevent a hit and run. It's going to aid in the prosecution of a hit and run after it has happened. The argument is "we need cameras so we can catch the people who are running over bicyclists." You've turned it into "we need cameras so we can prevent hit and runs." They are not the same. More sophistry. 3) Further, an argument put forth for the cameras is probable cause - "people are being skeeshed, we need cameras up so we can catch the culprits." The argument for surveillance bypasses probable cause - "we need to put cameras up in case something bad happens." I think this was a mistake on your part, but you know better. 4) Finally, you're obliquely attempting to make a point that not only attempts to undermine my own, you're ignoring the very argument I'm making. Simply put, for your future quoting fun, Surveillance against law-abiding citizens is bad because laws can change and those who enforce them are imperfect, putting the citizen in danger of future criminalization for current non-criminal acts. Your argument boils down to "but if they have nothing to worry about now, then they have nothing to worry about NOW." Your defense of this argument is "but people who have stuff to worry about now should be surveilled in public." Which nobody is talking about. Your "anti-surveillance" argument is not, in fact, anti-surveillance. It's pragmatic. It says "perhaps we shouldn't spend tens of thousands of dollars and put the civil liberties of every citizen in Austin in jeopardy in exchange for marginally-improved prosecutorial tools against people who are already breaking the law." The amendment to it is "maybe we should park a police car at those intersections at closing time and nobody has to worry about a fucking thing." See how easy that was? See how non-theoretical and clear-cut?
Well, you're sort of angry about this, which is good I guess. If there's anything in the US to be angry about right now it's this stuff. But anyway, you misunderstand. I'm not making an argument, like you said several times, and certainly not offering my post as a counter to what you said. I actually originally typed it up as a reply to the OP, but felt it made a bit more sense added on to your post. I'm just adding something to the discussion, and that is this: we often end up having to weigh immediate safety (and yes, that's what the NSA will say they're giving you by pinging emails for 'bomb'; if anyone actually believes that is inconsequential to them) versus a future loss of privacy. Or, especially, we end up being told that's what is happening. I'm saying that's a very hard concept to explain to people, and that dichotomy is difficult to assess if you're Obama, or his NSC, etc. "Privacy" has become a buzzword, an excuse, and I think that's wrong, precisely because it leads to the same argument being made in the cases of two wildly different things -- in this instance the NSA's snooping and streetcorner surveillance. This inevitably weakens the argument. (Also -- a) it's good to put someone in jail who is morally okay with driving drunk and then leaving the scene of a crime, and b) cameras prevent crime, theoretically***. If we had never had streetlights, muggings would be more frequent, and adding streetlights may not stop a mugging that's already happened, but it sure does prevent new ones.)