re: #155 dog philosopher

i suppose you mean to guarantee me that our current intelligence gathering apparatus has absolutely zero chance of being abused at any time in the future

Obviously I cannot guarantee that. Neither can anyone else, and no matter how limp and ineffective our national security establishment became, I still could not guarantee this. Having the conversation in the context of this hypothetical guarantee is distracting and pointless, because it is a thing that can never be.

This is pretty much the exact definition of a strawman.