But what is the point of your thought experiment? What I infer is that you don't support torture because it is not effective. You agree that it is bad, but that is not relevant to whether it should be used. What I infer is that you are an advocate of a crude form of utilitarianism. Some other morally bad activity that is actually effective in saving more lives than it destroys is something you can get behind.
This type of reasoning is used in all sorts of military actions, like drone strikes.
Armong the many problems with it: in practice it never works out that even a simple calculation of whatever action saves net lives should be pursued. Instead, policy makers operate with wildly different valuations of individual lives. Roughly, the ration of the value of one american life to one foreign national of a Muslim persuasion seems to be about 100:1. This leads to very steep slippery slopes and resulting atrocities.
That's just one problem with your views, which are thoughtless and crude.
The point of my thought experiment is the op was saying that there are some thing we don't even have to think about like torture and the surveillance we are discussing. For the surveillance, it seems much more reasonable to believe it might actually help.
I disagree. Using evil tactics is a "code smell" if you will. Even thinking about using such tactics for one second is a red flag that something has gone wrong. Why would you need to spy on your own citizens? Because they're upset. Would it really be better to oppress them than figure out why they're upset and address it?
This type of reasoning is used in all sorts of military actions, like drone strikes.
Armong the many problems with it: in practice it never works out that even a simple calculation of whatever action saves net lives should be pursued. Instead, policy makers operate with wildly different valuations of individual lives. Roughly, the ration of the value of one american life to one foreign national of a Muslim persuasion seems to be about 100:1. This leads to very steep slippery slopes and resulting atrocities.
That's just one problem with your views, which are thoughtless and crude.