>Likewise, how many will suffer today in the crossfire between criminal gangs, extremist organisations and legitimate governments? How many would suffer if legitimate governments didn't fight?
About as many, or even less.
Governments not using mass surveillance, and other forms of spying on their own citizens, implies the following benefits:
The money spent on mass surveillance is either spent elsewhere (so you merely need to find a more productive use of those untold billions to decide that the surveillance is not worth it) or not collected as taxes or tariffs to begin with.
The man hours spent constructing, maintaining and operating the apparatus of surveillance is spent elsewhere (this coincides with the benefit above, where the government takes engineering talent and uses it for more productive projects or increases the supply of engineering talent in the private market alongside a tax rebate).
The money & man hours spent by innocent people (read: people caught in 'crossfire') defending themselves from mass surveillance is free to be spent on more productive projects (whereas now it merely serves to lower the impact of the 'crossfire').
The chilling effect caused by mass surveillance ceases to exist (or is at least less in the world where people are unsure whether mass surveillance occurs vs. the world where they know it occurs for sure).
As for the detriments, I'm not sure how effective mass surveillance has been at achieving its stated goal - while I cant reliably reason about a world where mass surveillance never existed, I can say that the impact of domestic and international terrorism on the quality of life in US and Europe was not high prior to mass surveillance and that I see no good reason to believe it should have increased dramatically enough to justify both the resources spent and the loss of privacy (or even either of those separately) - but this is an argument that you need to make, I can't provide it for you.
I'm also not aware of any notable achievements of the mass surveillance programs, and although these may be classified, I doubt they exist since the US gov't still refuses fair trials to the alleged terrorists it imprisons, and if the surveillance projects had generated a significant amount of useful, incriminating evidence this would not be necessary (under the, imo, fair assumption that the reason they avoid trial is that the govt is incapable of proving guilt in many relevant).
Intelligence collection is not about security but about * control*, though security is a small subset of control.
The problem is that, as Gall's Law states, systems and organization eventually become counter productive: the NSA and the security industry generally are threats to individual and national security.
This seems like a mighty conspiracist view on the topic. There haven't been any inklings, covert or overt, that the recent actions taken by governments are for anything other than their stated goals.
How can you confidently say that this is about control and not security?
Have you ever managed an organization? Then you would understand why it is a fundamental need for those in control to have the maximum amount of information possible. It's impossible to govern an organization of you know nothing about it.
That you call it a conspiracy betrays your ignorance of this matter.
About as many, or even less.
Governments not using mass surveillance, and other forms of spying on their own citizens, implies the following benefits:
The money spent on mass surveillance is either spent elsewhere (so you merely need to find a more productive use of those untold billions to decide that the surveillance is not worth it) or not collected as taxes or tariffs to begin with.
The man hours spent constructing, maintaining and operating the apparatus of surveillance is spent elsewhere (this coincides with the benefit above, where the government takes engineering talent and uses it for more productive projects or increases the supply of engineering talent in the private market alongside a tax rebate).
The money & man hours spent by innocent people (read: people caught in 'crossfire') defending themselves from mass surveillance is free to be spent on more productive projects (whereas now it merely serves to lower the impact of the 'crossfire').
The chilling effect caused by mass surveillance ceases to exist (or is at least less in the world where people are unsure whether mass surveillance occurs vs. the world where they know it occurs for sure).
As for the detriments, I'm not sure how effective mass surveillance has been at achieving its stated goal - while I cant reliably reason about a world where mass surveillance never existed, I can say that the impact of domestic and international terrorism on the quality of life in US and Europe was not high prior to mass surveillance and that I see no good reason to believe it should have increased dramatically enough to justify both the resources spent and the loss of privacy (or even either of those separately) - but this is an argument that you need to make, I can't provide it for you.
I'm also not aware of any notable achievements of the mass surveillance programs, and although these may be classified, I doubt they exist since the US gov't still refuses fair trials to the alleged terrorists it imprisons, and if the surveillance projects had generated a significant amount of useful, incriminating evidence this would not be necessary (under the, imo, fair assumption that the reason they avoid trial is that the govt is incapable of proving guilt in many relevant).