What are these benefits?
I know you probably disagree with that, but this is my point - not everyone agrees that surveillance is bad. And I'm not alone - I think most people don't really care about surveillance. And this isn't a conspiracy - it's just a simple case of people not agreeing with you - this happens - get over it.
This is absolutely not why people object to pervasive surveillance. The democracy that you harp on about above as the justification for your position is fundamentally incompatible with pervasive surveillance and secret trials.
The problem is not whether they can see pictures of my cats on twitter or imessages to my girlfriend, it's that with pervasive and universal surveillance of our communications which GCHQ is engaged in (collect it all, mastering the internet), those in power would become almost omniscient and able to manipulate our markets, our economy, our politicians, our judges and every other branch of our society. This activity is currently not significantly limited by law, but only by technical ability, which is fast changing. For example all SMS messages in the UK are stored, and all internet traffic crossing the kingdom (which is almost all of it) for as long as possible (Tempora), probably some phone calls too. We also don't even know who they share it with - probably the NSA given their subsidiary relationship. In the wrong hands, this would be a terrible weapon, and even in the right hands, it's likely to pervert those given the power.
If you had access to the private emails of judges, lawyers, accountants, politicians, in retrospect and forever it would be incredibly easy to make and break careers and manipulate everyone else in the country to bend them to your will. Now imagine this power in the hands of a select few, and the rise to power of someone ruthless enough to use it for their own ends. Perhaps initially they'd simply nudge a referendum on independence, or a presidential election by releasing inconvenient emails at the right moment, maybe they'd ensure their continued funding with blackmail (has this already happened, would we ever know?), maybe they'll decide they could run this place better after all - again, we wouldn't even know our democracy had been entirely subverted until it was too late.
IMO the time to oppose this sort of surveillance is now - surveillance should be one-off and controlled by independent judges on a case by case basis, not pervasive and eternal.
This is exactly what is happening right now, and you have to be a complete IDIOT to not see that this is the case. Governments are gathering loads of data about every single one of us. Just because they decide not to act on that data right now,does not mean we should not be worried, and you couldn't be more wrong when you say that the government does not care what you write to your gf on iMessage.
Instead, our problem, is that surveilance is being used as a an invaluable tool for autocracy.
And the question is not whether they will use surveilance for oppressing government opposition, but when if not already.
Maybe that's not surveillance being used to suppress in your book. Whatever. Your post reads like propaganda though.
This statement is nonsensical, because we know now that recording and reading what we write to our girlfriends on iMessage is exactly what they are doing. Indeed GCHQ have watched so many webcam chats amongst random people they can tell us how many are pornographic to three significant digits of accuracy. This is very much the definition of "giving a fuck".
Given that the premise of your post is incorrect, I wonder why you hold the opinions you do.
Your beliefs are wrong, as we have been shown that this mass surveillance has failed to prevent even one terrorist attack since its inception.
Couple that with the immense amount of (wasted) tax payer money it costs to run and you've got a disgusting abuse of power and resources in exchange for the mere illusion of security to those who fail to actually do the research required to see through the bullshit.
We don't actually know this. Mass surveillance may have led to 'extrajudicial' methods of thwarting terrorist attacks, i.e. death squads or drone killings. Or when cases of terrorist plots have been taken to trial, its use could have been masked by parallel construction of evidence.
This level of underhandedness seems to be increasing in recent times. For example, there is a terrorist conspiracy trial currently ongoing in the UK that is being held almost entirely in secret - the public and media are not permitted to know the evidence or the sources of evidence against the suspects. In fact up until recently even the existence of the trial and the identities of the suspects were under a gag order, for reasons unknown[1].
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jun/12/secret-terror-tri...
I'm just not sure how much 'we can't reveal that due to national security concerns' is going to fly as an excuse anymore.
Far too many shady things can be covered up under that umbrella.
For what it's worth, I suspect it's unduly balanced towards authoritarianism as well.
a webcam in all bedrooms would ensure more security and possibly prevent other types of crime.
most people wouldn't go for those - some security measures are too invasive and ripe for abuse to support.
unless you've missed it, your location and contact endpoints are now permanently stored, and some of your conversations both written and audible are.
if one of your associates is within a certain number of hops from someone deemed undesirable - so are you.
the reason the london met phone hacking scandal resulted in outcry was that the general public could understand what happened.
this is slightly beyond their ken but it's the same problem - questionable powers that are ripe for abuse.
How many terrorist attacks have been prevented as a result of this illegal privacy invasion?
Is there any evidence of it ensuring security? I see none.
What leads you to believe that it ensures security?