Comment by colonwqbang

The bar for public policy should be set quite a bit higher than "it could have done some good at some point, maybe".

In comic books, we read fanciful stories about the good guys saving the world in secret. But the real world doesn't really work like that.

When the police seize some illegal drugs, what is the first thing they do? They snap a picture and publish it for society to see:

https://www.google.com/search?q=police+seize+drugs&tbm=isch

because citizens want to see that their tax money is being used successfully. The same would likely be done by the surveillance authorities if they saw significant success in their mission.