How else do you think that information can be searched on without it being downloaded first? I mean, let's say you have a hypothetical ISIS member who knows about shit going down, and he communicates with other ISIS members from [email protected] or something. If you don't have the databases with all of that information, how would you even be able to search on that information in the first place? How could you figure that out? Let's say our hypothetical ISIS member is moving to make an assault on one of the US' embassies, and uses varying communications protocols in order to get tactics and strategies out there with his peeps. Those would prove crucial towards any defense against it, but you kind of need to be able to find his stuff first. It's just not possible without that bulk collection.

Now let's add some other BS in the mix. Let's say that divulging any of this information, how this collection happens, how it all gets picked up, whatever protocols are in place that allow it to be searched on, were made public. Now you have that same ISIS member being informed that they can't use X, they should use Y instead, and suddenly that tactical information is no longer available, decreasing the ability of the US to defend itself and its interests. So you can say "we don't search on anyone who doesn't deserve it" and pick out exactly who deserves it and who doesn't, you can point to EO12333 or various other regulations/laws and note that you're compliant with them, but the moment you go beyond that, you're helping out your enemies, ISIS, foreign governments that may or may not be complicit with funding terrorism, drug and human traffickers, etc., and that sucks in a big way. And no one's going to trust you, because no one's going to believe anything that's kept secret, and those that do leak any information do so with an incomplete picture of that information.

There's always a line in the sand, there's always a balance between liberty and tyranny, freedom and security. If you accept that the US has an ability and the responsibility to help out foreign nations when requested, if you accept that the current economic prosperity of the world and decrease of global violence is the result of the US hegemony securing international trade, then the ability of the US to maintain that security, to keep that balance, should not be destroyed. I won't say that distrust of the US government is unwarranted, it's this huge monster of innumerable people with varying ethical models and a very dirty history that seems to work more to maintain itself than to maintain the freedom of the people that it claims to represent, but I will say that evidence of a surveillance state is rather slim, even if you can't really prove a negative.