Nobody claimed anyone broke any laws. He claimed that the NSA spies on american citizens and that it is better to have an honest job.

The fact that it is legal for them to do this is the problem, obviously.

That is absolutely not legal though, which is why I asked for a citation, as it would be pretty big news.

It WAS big news. It was called the Snowden leaks.

For example, the government argues to this day that it is ok to do drag net collection of phone meta data.

Having access to every single person that you have called, counts as spying in my book, even if they aren't listening in to the conversations specifically.

The comment was present tense.

I certainly agree with you regarding previous handling of phone metadata, among other issues such as secret interpretations of law, but I was satisfied by changes/fixes made in the USA Freedom Act[1]. What current issue are still outstanding which you believe need to be addressed? (Serious, I like to learn and would be great to know if I am missing something).

[1] https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ23/PLAW-114publ23.pdf

Snowden let that cat out of the bag years ago in voluminous detail. You absolutely do not need to cite sources re: illegal NSA surveillance anymore.

If you believe that his claim was proven by a leak, I am not sure why it would be difficult to produce a citation. My understanding is that it is not a true claim.

His claim was the leak, and it was huge, and I'm not going to dig through it for you for quotes just because you're a contrarian. The NSA did a shit ton of surveillance that was not justified under known US law, and that's pretty well accepted at this point.

What claim don't you think is true? Was the NSA not indiscriminately scooping up and querying communications between US citizens?

> What claim don't you think is true? Was the NSA not indiscriminately scooping up and querying communications between US citizens?

Correct. That would be a very big deal in my opinion. After reading through the hundreds of source documents leaked by Snowden, I did not find evidence of any sort of mass collection on US persons. Only foreign collection, which is the job of a spy agency (Perhaps plenty of ethical arguments there of course, but that is besides the matter of USPI collection/reporting).

Does the shtick of crying citation needed on well-documented public knowledge actually work, anywhere?

Not crying anything. I have seen no proof of the claim, I only ever see unsourced comments, oddly claiming the matter is documented yet not citing anything. It is very strange.