> they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much.

Except they do. The NSA has been handing over intel over a decade ago:

> A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said. [1]

Sure these were criminals, but who knows how many “undesirables” were prosecuted or targeted for some crime anybody commits?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/us-drug-agency-g...