No one (in this thread at least) has said that they are not supposed to "spy" completely. What people are concerned with is dragnet surveillance. The way you are framing the issue is a classic case of a false dilemma.

EDIT: My apologies, it looks like the top comment does drop that in at the end. That is indeed an unfortunate generalization. I do think that a more moderate and "middle-of-the-HN-crowd" approach would actually entail something short of dragnet surveillance though.