I feel just as violated as any American by the thought of NSA spying me.
2. A US entity is tasked with info collection on the rest of the world (and is good at it).
3. US entities funded by the US have rules that prevent them from spying on those who fund them.
Completely understandable and predictable.
Ah, so that's settled then. So, spying on normal people and prying into their private lives is ethical - as long as they aren't American?
What about American expats? How does the NSA distinguish between them and non-Americans?
What about the Five Eyes? Perhaps the NSA doesn't read about your juicy personal life but GCHQ does because the NSA handed Americans' private data over to them?
You'd have to be pretty blind to not see they in fact are the devil.
Keyword emphasized, and anyway ahat safeguards are there to ensure that they won't turn against "undesirable" Americans at any point in the future?
Like how the American citizens of Japanese origin were more-or-less extra-judicially just herded into camps back around WWII, and the perceived "risk factor" of American Muslims right now.
Yes the NSA takes privacy very seriously. The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Oh, well yeah of course we collect data from Americans but if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're supposed to throw it away immediately.
Throw in a harmless joke about "big scary NSA" to lighten the mood. Nice salary, nice benefits. Most of the students ask for applications after class, it's a career forum for area studies majors and this is by far the most lucrative job presented in the semester.
It's honestly pretty easy to make a deal with the devil, especially if you're smart enough to argue that he's not the devil.