&gt; What if the current President or some future President goes digging through the emails of their opposition in an election year?<p>This has happened before with Watergate -- and the only reason Nixon got caught was because people talked. I would imagine something similar would happen. Politics can help create some balance here -- if they really were doing something that benefitted one side over another, someone from the other side would likely blow the whistle.<p>Regardless though, that information wouldn&#x27;t just be sitting there unencrypted if there was no request look at it: there would be a paper trail that a certain individual was targeted and records pulled. That&#x27;s not always the case if you just have a huge database of unencrypted communications.<p>&gt; What if the NSA starts investigating the records of politicians with a anti-NSA stance?<p>This is a danger I am actually concerned about, but I&#x27;m also pretty sure this has been going on for decades. If not with the NSA, then with the FBI (e.g. the Hoover era).<p>&gt; with power like that, they could basically destroy anyone who opposes them before they even start.<p>You don&#x27;t even need government power to do this; the major political parties are set up with this purpose in mind. And work in politics for even a little bit and you&#x27;ll realize there&#x27;s not a whole lot of separation between government work and party work. I don&#x27;t know that this is really much different than the status quo over the last few decades.