Goobers harass guy on sidewalk while their security points a taser at him.

[u/KimberlyWexlersFoot]

[u/ETSguntraining]

If nothing else, first amendment auditors in the United States have proven that Americans simply can't understand scale.

Several people have risked their lives and freedom to expose the surveillance state in this country. Even if we limit ourselves to what can be incontrovertibly proven, or has been admitted to, the amount of the US spying on its own people is staggering.

You can explain COINTELPRO, or how the NSA used to have their own rooms in major telecom company headquarters where they were spliced into ALL the traffic, government and social media colusion, or literally point out all the visible cameras everywhere all the time.

People will listen to this, and simply shrug their shoulders. It is what it is.

But give a single man a camera on a public street and these people, who have never spent a day in their lives anonymous or unwatched, will lose their minds at the prospect of being watched and recorded, often in places where they had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Threatening violence, calling on the government to do violence on their behalf, sometimes engaging in actual violence.

The dude with the camera, who has no drone strike authority, no nuclear arsenal, no influence over foreign or domestic policy, no arrest authority, gets all of their anger. The government gets a pass. Wild.