Strong disagree. The potential damage done by mass surveillance would be against private communication, not public. Intelligence agencies can and do gather a lot of intelligence by just observing publicly-shared information. And considering the surveillance excesses observed since the war on terror has unfolded, there has been no discernible decrease in speech freedom nor has anyone ever been provably prosecuted or persecuted due to data wrongly collected in one of these programs.
I do think the chilling effect from big brother remains and we don't know if intelligence agencies collect about people, building profiles for example.
What I know is that agencies couldn't produce evidence of data collection helping with their mission. And it becomes a problem if the work too closely with political parties in my opinion.
What I do have seen is panicking about certain people that could gather some crowds and we do know that intelligence agencies like to disturb a civil right movement or two. I demand performance from people payed by taxes and they cannot deliver.
