Technically speaking, it’s not that I actually think that there can be “benign” surveillance networks, since there should be none of this Orwellian stuff in the first place.

Some networks are not actively malignant, by which I mean they are not attempting to harass, manipulate, make up lies, etc.  It may be more accurate to say that with some networks whose surveillance properties I’m aware of, if they have any direct or indirect negative or mixed repercussions on my life or the lives or the lives of others, I remain (more or less comfortably) ignorant of this.

In contrast, some networks are actively malignant in relation to your community.  (An example you are familiar with are the NSA)

In contrast to a malignant and intrusive network, a parallel passive network for the purposes at hand can be considered “benign”, even regardless of origin to an extent.  A benign network obviously can become actively malignant (manipulative, intrusive, destructive in other ways) at a later point in time.

The effects of the very wide-ranging, very actively intrusive, habitually deceptive and corrupt, habitually on a self-righteous crusade against one thing or another, malignant network that I became aware of a few years ago are present in the world today.  I’m unsure of what these effects are in the larger scheme of things; this is kind of a big question.  Certainly the practices of this network are corrupt, deceptive, and very self-righteously intrusive and strongly manipulative.  I don’t think I even have to add, “from my perspective”, since this has by now been acknowledged by everyone.  Of course the other feature of this network is self-characterization as “art” (sic) or as some self-professedly benevolent force that has a moral right to act in an intrusive manner, or as an experiment.  What they are doing is nothing short of warfare waged against an individual, and each of those are clearly immoral and unjustifiable grounds for this sort of destruction of individual life.  If it can be done in this domain, then the momentum and the complacency exists for this to be done to others.  This societal tendency as such, as it transfers between domains (surveillance — > military occupation, etc. — > ecological racism — > etc. ), within the soul (or conscience or whatever) of an individual, as well as a tendency in groups, is my (or our) enemy.