Well that's what the the courts are for. There are punishments like adding oversight into the agency.

It's reactive, but hey you don't get a ticket for "conspiracy to speed".

There isn't a lot of piercing of the corporate veil happening in gov't agencies though. As in people getting arrested.

But at the same time, if you work at the FBI, want to try something, and your lawyers say it's legal... Should you go to jail? Should the lawyer?

Sending the person in jail doesn't really help much, but forcing the agency to adopt new postures could help more. We could do both as well, but what does throwing the person in jail really accomplish, apart from giving people a sense of vindication?

I don't know about the US but in Canada a "Justice of the Peace" has a full-time job to signs police warrants not regular judges who deal with criminal cases. I've hear that Justices rarely deny police requests and they deal with police all day... there is never a defense attorney present when wiretaps are agreed upon. Oversight is always well after-the-fact.

They are only ever question way later into the legal process (sometimes over a year afterwards) and always with a different judge and circumstances.

Law enforcement have a far easier job getting it approved than it is for defendants to question it's legitamcy. And even if it is ruled illegal the wiretap still happened and the defendants privacy was still unduly violated. But there is almost never any repercussions outside of the potentially losing a legal case against a defendant.

The chains of responsibility between where decision-making takes place and scrutiny is made are very disconnected.

> could help more. We could do both as well, but what does throwing the person in jail really accomplish, apart from giving people a sense of vindication?

It creates an incentive for individuals not to do things that would land them in jail.

Yes, I do believe that when a law is broken by a law enforcement agency there should be appropriate penalty. In certain cases that should mean extra oversight and or criminal prosecution of directors.

I don't have the right answer on oversight and enforcement but I would love for agencies of the executive branch to act within the confines of the law and stop acting like breaking into our lives is just part of protecting us.

Do you mean something like the office of the inspector general [1], or an actual law enforcement agency focusing on federal agencies? If the latter, you're in danger of proposing an infinitely recursive solution.

1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Inspector_Gene...

A major problem seems to be that 'ex-cops' don't like inspecting 'cops'. However, balancing powers between three entity's seems to work well.

Agency A inspects agency B, agency B inspects C, C inspects A. That way B can't threaten A.

As a bonus it really set's things up so they get antagonistic with each other.