I mean some of these people are really smart and understand how this spying can be abused. There must be something they know that makes them build or support these programs.
When the the US invaded Iraq, I started to doubt my own firmly held beliefs. Did they possess some classified evidence that I did not? Going to war without the authorization of the Security Council was such a grave breach of precedent and international law that I didn't believe the Bush administration would take such a drastic action if they didn't fully expect to find WMDs.
It turns out they didn't secretly have reliable information the rest of us didn't. They were blinded by conviction and ideology.
I'm sure these people in government and at the intelligence agencies truly believe these programs are vital to protect the US from terrorism. They know spying can be abused, but in their minds any abuse is unintentional and minor relative to the purported benefits of spying on terrorists.
They really, really wanted to invade Iraq. It never made any sense from the rhetoric alone. Yes there were true believers, yes there were the propagandized officials and newsmen and opinion makers, a mad fervence of sorts. It never made any sense, and yet it was sure to happen, and what for? Why spite ourselves so?
I don't know why, but I do know at the core whatever the reason it was coolly rational, strategic, and not good.
And more to the point, they knew exactly what their information was worth. A document known as the "Downing Street Memo" is pretty blunt on that: "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo , http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html)
We're not talking about any random document either. It was, in effect, the executive summary of the pre-Iraq war situation, given to the prime minister of UK by his private secretary.
just look at the recent 100 years of human history - good and smart people can perpetrate awful things if they suitably organized and informed. "Just doing my job", "just carrying out the orders", etc... In 21st century in the world's most progressive country, government employees and contractors were torturing other people just because some government lawyer wrote a memo saying it is a good thing.
So why bother fighting against the current? Someone somewhere must've determined it's legal... right?
Snowden is pretty chilling. Doing the right thing and bring up a major issue will cost you everything other than your life. I'd like to think I'd do the same but I just don't know.
Governments and security agencies want the Social Graph -- in detail, and, if possible, in real-time. This has become one of their top strategic priorities.
There is no legitimate "use" of these programs that would stand in contrast to what you call their "abuse".
Goverment == Evil ------------------
Before PRISM:
Bob: "Hey, Bill, I'm feeling bored tonight. Want to go hit Paul Graham with a crowbar until he confesses to terrorism?"
Bill: "Sounds fun, Bob, but we don't have anything on him. Let's just sit on our butts and collect a paycheck for doing nothing."
After PRISM:
Bob: "Hey, Bill, I'm feeling bored tonight. Want to go hit Paul Graham with a crowbar?"
Bill: "Sounds fun, Bob. Hey, it looks like he ate at a restaurant whose owner gave to an animal rights group whose mailing list sent an update message to a teenager who might be connected to ALF. I'll go get the crowbar."
Goverment == Stupid -------------------
Before PRISM:
Bob: "Hey, Bill, I'm feeling bored tonight. Want to go hit Paul Graham with a crowbar until she confesses to terrorism?"
Bill: "Good thinking, Bob. Paul Graham is a woman programmer."
Bob: "And all women programmers are terrorists."
Bill: "So Paul Graham is a terrorist. I'll go get the crowbar"
After PRISM:
Bob: "Hey, Bill, I'm feeling bored tonight. Want to go hit Paul Graham with a crowbar until she confesses to terrorism?"
Bill: "Good thinking, Bob. Except PRISM is saying that female programmers have a 95% chance of not being terrorists. Also, there's a 65% chance that Paul Graham is male. Paul Graham might not actually be a terrorist"
Bob: "No shit? Well, that would have been embarrassing. Let's just sit on our butts and collect a paycheck for doing nothing."
-------------------
Clearly this is all a terrible caricature and the government contains a mix of stupid and evil. However, if you believe that the government is mostly stupid, then programs like this will increase the government's intelligence and decrease atrocities. On the other hand, if the government is more evil than stupid, keeping information out of the government's hands is the best course of action. Well, the best course of action in either case is to just take away Bill's crowbar, but that discussion sidesteps the entire privacy debate.
[Secret impersonal machine-learning algorithm follows links on social networks, private phone calls, and financial transactions and decides you should be put on the "threat" list and you (and potentially your friends) are continually surveilled and treated with extreme negative prejudice in every interaction with public servants. You attempt to complain and learn of the evidence against you, but you are stonewalled by official denials and national security.]
For many of them, the paycheck is probably motivation enough. IT subcontracting from governments and security agencies can be quite lucrative.
> It is very difficult to overstate the extent to which "government people" live in a bubble.
I completely agree and I would add that a large part of that bubble - particularly for many military/intelligence folk - is the 'them and us' or perhaps more accurately 'them vs us' paradigm. People in these professions tend to see the world in a very black and white view. In my country at least, some of our intelligence agencies have a long history of being staffed by people with a fairly fundamental religious background. So when this kind of black and white, "them vs us", religious or quasi-religious (and quite likely racist) view is applied to national security, matters of immigration and so on, the result is pretty predictable IMO. Many of these people truly live in a different world than I do, one that harks back all the way to attitudes that were forged during the events of WWII and before.
Not to say that everyone involved on a government's side is blinded by dogma, but I believe enough of them are (in certain spheres) to keep the culture alive.