[Zikes]

There's no such thing as a trustworthy government, and the "if you don't like it then maybe you should just leave" attitude doesn't help anyone.

It's backwards, the citizenry doesn't have to tolerate their government, the government must serve its citizenry.

[thex86]

I don't know what you are smoking but given your comment history, I am sure you would be fine if the police came knocking at your door at night and randomly wanted to search your place, without a warrant. Right? Since you did nothing wrong, it should be OK for the police to randomly search people's places and arrest them. We should trust the police also and let's remove the judicial oversight they have. Correct?

You should ask yourself why the police should not be allowed to do this. And then if you do understand, you may perhaps realize why the GCHQ should not be allowed to carry out mass surveillance.

[k-mcgrady]

Unfortunately the country you're in isn't a choice. I can't just move to another country because they have laws preventing people from doing that.

[potatolicious]

Elsewhere in the thread you say "If you disagree with those laws, apply pressure to change the law."

So which is it. Do you expect people to stay and fight perceived injustices, or leave? You can't have it both ways.

[fit2rule]

If you think that having a wide open window into the industrialized world, such that GCHQ and NSA have, and don't use that for capitalist, industrialist purposes, then you are a fool.

Its not about having anything to hide. Its about whether or not others can use your work against you. This happens far more often than real terrorism, and it ruins lives, industry, and culture when it happens.

[Zikes]

Exactly, and on top of that most people actually do have something to hide, whether they realize it or not.[1]

Even setting aside crimes, there's plenty of things that happen in peoples' day-to-day lives that the government has absolutely no business even being aware of. It's not hard to imagine that they could collect vast troves of information on a person and then that information can get misused in any number of ways by rogue employees or by the government itself.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

[lzman]

Internet commenting is a cesspool of idiocy.

[fit2rule]

If your government is daily committing crimes against humanity, you shouldn't be trusting it. You should be replacing it.