[dadver]

Schizophrenic here with a long time interest in computer security. I've had many discussions with my (previous) psychiatrist about exactly this, often arguing that it's not that far fetched that there are a swarm of entities (not just three-letter-agencies) that are interested in surveilling you. Add to that that your paranoia might be more or less well-founded, say that you're doing various criminal activities, the bounderies between justifiable paranoia and illness can become _very_ hard to make out.

I remember especially us discussing three-letter-agencies' mass-surveillance and I brought up NSA's ECHELON and other things that have been semi-known/-public for decades. About two years later the Snowden leaks came about and my psychiatrist started telling me about different cases he had had where people were misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and there later turned out to be real world explanations and not hallucinations and/or delusions.

I just wanted to share this anecdote. It's a shitty disease and you're absolutely on point about how it already is and will become even more so in the near future.