Seems like a fairly straight forward comparison at face value: What negative value do you ascribe to 5000 people being killed by terrorists compared to 5 milli

Seems like a fairly straight forward comparison at face value: What negative value do you ascribe to 5000 people being killed by terrorists compared to 5 million people? Obviously, 5 million deaths would have a far greater effect on every day life and the ability of society to function. On the other side, what value do you ascribe to freedom from government lies and spying? This is tougher, but it is generally assumed that the government performing such acts will lead to inefficient use of resources and services - resources that could have been used to prevent deaths in car accidents or raise the standard of society as a whole. So at face level, the OPs comparison using statistics is fairly sound, and the changeover point is where the number of deaths or potential deaths switches over from one side of the argument to the other. The OP is arguing that 5000 deaths is nowhere near the costs that the spying program has on society. This seems fair. The arguments against the OP are that removing the spying program would increase the 5000 figure by orders of magnitude, or that the spying program has no negative effects. I disagree with both these arguments, so I think that the OP is probably right.