> A surveillance state is _certainly_ incompatible with the constitution That part isn't actually true. It's arguably and intuitively incompatible, but it's no

> A surveillance state is _certainly_ incompatible with the constitution That part isn't actually true. It's arguably and intuitively incompatible, but it's not certainly incompatible. This is a really important difference that keeps getting swept aside by ideological rants. If you're going to make the Constitution your basis for law or morality, you need to (1) know exactly what it says and (2) have a very strong sense of its history of interpretation. I would recommend that you avoid this line of argument, though, for two reasons. One, it's not portable to other countries. "Incompatibility with the U.S. Constitution" is a bad reason for China or the UK to not become a surveillance state. This forces you into an American-centric position that's basically blind to international nuance. Two, the Constitution can and will be changed, and the reasoning for doing so is never going to be "compatibility with the Constitution". It is rare that I would recommend a libertarian perspective, but this is a case where it would behoove you to study how they come to their positions. I recommend the libertarian one because it's simple-minded enough to take little effort to understand their reasoning process.