The problem is that "wrong" can be anything arbitrary, and what's not "wrong" today, it can be "wrong" tomorrow, however arbitrary it is. Somewhere it is wrong (illegal) to call someone a "n*zi", even online.
Also anyone who tells me that they have nothing to hide, I ask for their password. For some reason they don't give me their password. Interesting, huh?
Mind you, I was speaking in general about people who claim they don't care about their privacy, or about these companies collecting their personal data, or having a history of their private messages, etc.
How can you not care about them saving your conversations in plain text, but then suddenly care about it when I ask you to show it to me? The only difference seems to be that I'm actively, personally, directly asking you for it, but ultimately it would be the same outcome.
We are talking in a thread about NSA having your data vs other companies having your data.
(Un)fortunately you can't be prosecuted for crimes which were not illegal at the time of the offence.
Of course this doesn't take into account activities retroactively deemed "wrong" by The Great Twitter Mob which can have some serious effect on your livelihood because you made a Richard Gere gerbil joke some 20 years ago.
As someone who recently left a very abusive, toxic workplace, I see this as a reality.
The abuser of the child, a parent, apparently harassed the agency that received and forwarded the report until they gave up that "a medical practitioner had filed the report", which narrowed it down to a single practice.
At which point then the abuser was able to call the practice, get a record of who had seen the child, and even get their work schedule.
Even tiny leaks are a major problem in these cases.
Since when is the NSA supposed to spy on their own citizens by default? They should only target individuals that represent risk anyway. (if they were respecting the constitution)
If they were respecting the constitution, they should only target individuals for which they have a warrant (assuming we're talking about US citizens). Even then, it's my understanding that this is the job of the police, rather than the military.
Why are you comfortable with casual lawlessness?
The standard for "enemy" could also be as low as they choose it to be, which is also weird that people think the government wouldn't go after them because they are "innocent", as if these people get to decide who is innocent and who isn't.
No, it's the government that does that. Courts may have the final say in the end (unless you're indefinitely detained for multiple years first), but until then the government can do a lot of damage to your life if it comes after you. Even putting you through years of lawsuits, stress and money spent on lawyers would be bad enough. You may win in the end, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory.
And that's if you don't take their plea deal first when they scare you with multiple bogus charges that you think shouldn't even apply to you but you're too scared of the 50 years in prison sentence they're threatening you with.