Yup. That's literally the only reason the NSA (and CIA) exists. If they are spying on US citizens (which has been proven) then that's a huge issue. Since it's unconstitutional.

Spying on foreign powers? That's part of the game. Every single country is doing it to the US, and I see absolutely no moral issue being better than them at it.

So your argument is essentially, "we created those agencies for that purpose, therefore it's ok what they're doing". You don't see how that doesn't actually follow?

> Spying on foreign powers

Foreign governments would be one thing (IMO still probably wrong, especially so if it's an ally), but US agencies are spying on all foreign citizens.

> Every single country is doing it to the US

Yeah, source please. And scale matters.

>> Every single country is doing it to the US

>Yeah, source please. And scale matters.

I've seen the argument parroted around in the comments but it makes no sense. Bangladesh, Tanzania, Namibia, Laos, Cyprus, Rwanda, Haïti, Somalia just to name a few of the many who lack the resources to spy on a foreign superpower and have other more important priorities to deal with.

Somehow they also fail to understand that CIA and NSA were created in a specific historical (post-WW2 / cold war) context that has now expired. They have outlived their initial purposes and found other ways to justify their existences and budget since.

Yes. Because that is exactly their purpose. To gain SIGINT on others.

Every major nation does this kind of thing to each other to keep the others in check. Trust but verify.

> workaround of national law forbidding them to do so

Citizen data is still minimized, regardless of who collected it. There has never been evidence of this often-repeated "workaround" theory.

> There has never been evidence of this often-repeated "workaround" theory.

I mean, it was pretty clear from the Snowden leaks that this is what was happening.