The CIA literally hacked into congress[0]. Seems like the US intelligence agencies oversight is a little lacking at times.

[0] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-...

NSA disciplines employees who violate their rules on who gets to access data. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/nsa-spi...

And senior congressional officials, including people like Feinstein, Grassley, Burr, Schiff, and Warner, are effectively briefed on all intelligence matters. Not every member of congress is. America did a decent job after Watergate implementing supervision of intel.

NSA is probably not perfect, but it's better than the alternative. You know the old quote "Democracy isn't a great way to govern but it's better than the alternatives" -- probably fair to say "Western intelligence agencies aren't perfect but they are the best way we know to navigate today's surveillance economy and secure democracies."

The problem is as much oversight as there is they intentionally dissemble and use twisted definitions when testifying before the congressional oversight committies. In 2013 the claimed their PRISM and associated wide scale surveillance activities didn't 'collect' information about or surveil american citizens because respectively they didn't task or view the information and didn't listen in on the actual content of the conversations. It's impossible to properly oversee an organization that is that circumspect with the people overseeing them.

Compare to China and Russia who imprison and kill journalists and Interpol leaders, and have no democratic oversight.

If you don’t like the way NSA is governed, change it. That’s the power of a democratic system. But when the choice is between autocratic and democratic intelligence agencies, the choice is clear.

Better than the worst isn't a favorable comparison. And there's been attempts but they lie and dissemble at every opportunity to the oversight committees. Remember when they tried to redefine the word 'collect' to mean when they actually looked at the information so they could say they don't 'collect' information on american citizens? Or that gathering information on every call you make isn't surveillance because they don't collect the contents of the call as well?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/07/nsa-lexicon-how-...