Sorry to hear that. I don't know if it really helps, but you might want to try an internalize that as much surveillance as exists, they aren't interested in regular people not involved in crimes they or their superiors and corporate masters deem major.
Hate to inform you that anyone can be classified as "irregular" regardless of how innocent/harmless you are... Just ask all the black lives matters and occupy protesters who are currently getting harassed.
I.e. if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.
But even people who have nothing to hide have a lot to worry about, because merely coming to the attention of the government can be disastrous.
Say you're caught on camera at the post office or the corner gas station. There's an ongoing investigation, and the government observed that the subject of the investigation passed that camera yesterday. They decide to capture all other passers by within N hours of that event. You fall within that window.
The investigators do this with every other camera available to them.
Since you and the subject are going about your business at one location, there's a fair chance that you both have gone about your business in other nearby locations. Say you pass that filter.
There's a fair chance that you both were at some location at the same time, maybe even within eye sight of each other. Now you're a person of interest, and your name appears in the investigation.
Now remember that any law enforcement agency is fundamentally a bureaucracy. Almost no one actually knows how to manage; some are accidentally good managers, but most have been "Peter principled" up into management. Since we're enlightened enough to know by now that almost no one knows how to manage, we've tried to bring some fairness into the employee evaluation process, by using metrics.
"That which gets measured gets done." Any rational employee is going to pay attention to what he gets evaluated on. Number of tickets written. Number of suspects questioned. Number of arrests. Number of convictions resulting from arrests.
The investigation is going slowly. The investigator hasn't been out of the office for a week. His boss has been glaring at him lately. The investigator picks you to get himself out of the office. He visits you at work because you both work days and it's more intimidating to a subject to be embarrassed and nervous in view of co-workers. You've just suffered a minor injury to your reputation.
Surveillance shows that you both visit some location often, and often at the same time. Church. Store. Post Office. Or maybe you have an acquaintance in common, even if you don't know each other.
"We'd like you to wear a wire and contact the subject." Nah, I don't want to do that.
"It looks bad for you that you come into contact with this subject often. I'd hate for you to be investigated yourself." No really, this is not my thing.
"Remember that thing you thought was innocent and legal? It actually wasn't, and we're prepared to offer you a plea deal." Um ... OK
Totally made up but plausible scenario, and probably played out with different details daily. But at least the investigator is still in the running for an upgrade to his GS rating.
And the corruption; police who search your house randomly to find ot you use drugs which were placed there by police to fill their quotas, or your car. Or judges who were working with private jails. Or police officer who shoots you because you get out of your car. Or you were killed by police becouse your neigberhoods thought that you were Muslims making bomb, in fact you were watching Conan lights closed. Or you know that you are innocent but the hearing is once per 3 months and that makes your life suck. You are that taxi driver, you carry that killer, well fuck you, will question evry detail for 12 hours and we'll make you talk about him...
Yes, all that. Corruption is everywhere. It's one thing to be a victim of a corrupt gas station clerk, and quite another to be a victim of a corrupt law enforcement officer who is literally given benefit of the doubt in legal procedings. Or as the cops say, you may beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.
I actually don't have a problem with _humans_ knowing where I am and what I am doing. Consider that I use my real name here at HN as well as most other online communities, and that I am quite public about my mental illness.
What I find disturbing as that computers are able to correllate my activities in an automated way. I'm not so much worried about the NSA spying on me. What bothers me is that this is done for targeted advertising.
I am completely cool with certain kinds of targeted advertising. Say I visit slashdot and get an ad for a development tool; I'm fine with that.
What I'm not OK with, would be visiting at first slashdot, then after that, say, FaceBook, then getting an ad for a development tool because FB knows that I also hang out at /.
I've been heavily into sales and marketing for many years. I understand how it works rather more deeply than do most folks, for example, it is quite common for marketing people to have Psychology PhDs.
I expect that it's my understanding of marketing that makes me so upset about all this surveillance.
There are lots of things that I could legitimately worry about, but do not. For example I jaywalk across busy streets quite a lot, but don't worry about getting hurt. I also wander through bad neighborhoods late at night quite a lot, usually carrying my MacBook Pro, yet I do not worry about getting robbed.
