No I haven't seen the Shield, other than in previews. But I kind of know what it's about. Bad? It's a fine line. Having worked in emergency medicine in the field myself, I know that in the real world regulations get broken, and protocol isn't always followed. But is what they do illegal? Hell yes.

On TV, I'm sure they always get the criminal, who you know is guilty. But in the real world, things are much more ambiguous. The whole point of the Bill of Rights (and the goal of must Republican governments) is that it is better to let a guilty man go (hence the whole, innocent until proven guilty, "not guilty" verdicts instead of "innocent") than to let an innocent man be punished for their wrongs, limiting the power of the state over the people. What you (and the Shield) advocate is what totalitarian governments tend to go for, which is the power of the state over the people, the righteousness of the state, the acceptance of "collateral" damage to preserve the state.

I know you didn't explicitly say anything about it in the post I quoted, but I'm sure it's been mentioned in this thread, namely that if you have nothing to hide, why would you worry? In my experience, everybody has something to hide, everybody has a secret, it's just a matter of what it is. I know you're going to come back and say you don't, and I'm not going to argue with you since I don't know you. But from all the people I've dealt with in the field, everybody has something hide. And that's why I care about the US's ability to spy on its citizens; maybe what I do today isn't something they care about, but how about tomorrow, or 10 years from now, or 40 years from now?