He has 90% of a very valid point, which he then dilutes with 10% irrelevant kookery.
The Federal government has, indeed, used their (read: our) vast resources to maintain extensive files on many, if not all, of the people he mentioned. In some cases, like MLK's, they went well beyond simply "maintaining files."
Oddly, nobody who defends NSA spying ever seems to get around to defending these specific examples of the surveillance state gone berserk.
Your have a very valid point about "the surveillance state gone berserk".
However, for the names mentioned we should be casting aspersions on the FBI rather than the NSA. The FBI (mostly) are the ones responsible for spying on all those Americans.
Believe it or not, compared to the FBI the NSA are "the good guys"!
I don't see any particular reason to make a distinction between three-letter agencies, sorry.
Frankly, I don't really care that much if they spy on Marilyn Monroe or John Lennon or Richard Feynman or whoever. I care a LOT if they spy on senators, representatives, Presidents, diplomats, and judges, which is who they're spying on now, alongside the rest of us.
As a result, we risk creating a wholly unaccountable "shadow government" at a scale that even J. Edgar Hoover never dreamed of. The people who should be crying bloody murder are those politicians and judges. Why aren't they?
