Something funny about the people who are less worried about US spying because there is “oversight” and they are ultimately “democratically controlled”: they seem to be the same people who have very high faith in them working correctly and not against them. So they are certainly not going to be the ones who keep them in check.
The 'problematic people' are those who do not have the capacity to realize the difference between authoritarian regimes and their internal apparatus, vs the need state security with oversight.
These people are usually naively driven by some kind of decontextualized political mindset, where the equate the arbitrary actions of some state far away, in same context as local governance, and a big dose of ultra liberal (classical) utopianism.
'The NSA is like Xi because they can spy on me'.
It's like saying 'Biden is as bad as Xi because ultimately the Police in the USA could arrest me and put me in prison for 70 years'.
It's barely theoretically true and it makes little sense to compare systems that have oversight and independent judiciary with those controlled by a Dictator.
It's good that the US has the ability to know which Russian stooges are giving money to would-be US presidents, or heading his presidential campaign. And good that the US can trace large sums of money floating out of FTX's Bahamian bank account into the hands of whoever, especially politicians.
If a student protester dissappears in the night because they made an online post critical of the governor - well, all of us will hear about it a few hours later.
You’re the one who brought up the strawman of good/bad and morality, buddy. People weren’t talking about which regime was better or worse. They were only talking about rational self-interest based on where they are located in the world.
(And also bringing up how no state actor only does bad things to bad people in order to dispute the typical “if you’ve got nothing to hide/have done no wrong then you have nothing to worry about”.)
ISIS is worse than a mall cop with a bully streak, but it makes more sense for me to worry about that mall cop while shopping at the mall than to worry about ISIS.
