Jewel v. NSA class action lawsuit. The position of the federal government is, regardless which party is in power, is that you can't argue encountering suffering from mass data collection as it involves anyone.
The precedence of said trial is, that the executive does away with the judicial arm to press the legislative arm to do their bidding. Now if there were something called checks and balances...
Lavabit rather shot down, than to allow a backdoor into its encryption process, and we know from the Apple phone hack, that the DOJ doesn't wait or asks for permission.
In closing, to opposite methods from 2 German states from their era: West Germany was plagued by homegrown terrorism in the '70s and '80s, so the federal criminal agency devised a method to compare suspected terrorists with their known contacts, and analyzed the likelihood of them being suppliers, sympathizers or yet to be uncovered terrorists. They succeeded without the need to survey the whole country. On the other side of the border, the Stasi had a machine, that was automated to open up all letters coming from or going out the country, then reseal it after reading. A few thousand people still managed to escape the country before its downfall, but they, the Securitate and the KGB came closest to what people like to call thought police. Actually, no, the Tokko, the special branch of the Kempetai in Imperial Japan was the actual thought police.
We behind the Iron Curtain got to learn about these methods after the fall of the regimes, no defector came from any fabric, that has disclosed the scope and magnitude of mass surveillance. Mechanical surveillance is but a part of it, try a sleuth of people, who volunteer or is being coerced into spying on you. The so called secret trials, the little we know about them, is either a precursor to show trials, or they already are.
I have to join others in bringing the point home that no, these systems don't stop anything, nor do they prevent it. In large part because it's only mechanical surveillance, and no field agent extends it with an in-depth report if the target is actually dangerous, or how dangerous they really are. If you're a conservative, you have a buddy with whom you frequently go to a gun range to practice, but your buddy has a cousin, who writes an essay on domestic terrorism, so his search terms come up with white supremacy, pipe bombs, church shootings, etc. You the know the guy's cousin, you're being watched. The same with a liberal, a friend of theirs goes to the same organic artisan shop, they purchase similar foods, like the same movies, and the other one was in the Occupy movement, but one of their older relatives was a member of the Weather Underground, still at large, so they're under surveillance.
This may seem as overblown, or a joke, but it's neither. This is the only issue affecting everyone, including Americans, where you already are proven guilty by association until you can prove to be innocent. The 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments exists because it's based on precedence, namely the redcoats making any *beep* up to perform unlawful search and seizure. Saying I have nothing to hide, like the OP does, is nothing short of Loyalist behavior. It's also a lie. No sane person would tell an other at a first date, that there was cancer or mental illness in their family history, that they're nail biters, they snore, or they like to watch other people having sex.
I live in the Gordius Apartment Complex, my interior designer was M.C. Escher.
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