There seems to be little doubt - as you point out - that the NSA has also abused their mandate a bit by spying on Americans.
The largest share of the data they collect is about Americans. This is done without legitimate, meaningful oversight or probable cause. Most of their measurable activity is illegal and violates the rights of Americans. The difference between data collection in the PRC and in the USA is that the USA hasn't extensively acted on this information against its own citizens so far.
This overall tone and emphasis is similar to hand-waving away mass police brutality and oppression by saying "buuuuut they keep us safe".
Could you provide a citation on this?
> Most of their measurable activity is illegal and violates the rights of Americans.
This is a useless metric: it's true of both healthy and unhealthy spy agencies; the former because we wouldn't hear about the useful and legal things they do, only the occasional whistleblowing, while the latter because of the point you're trying to make. (I also disagree it's true.)
However, without a solid metric on their total classified activity, there's no way to determine if it's unhealthy or healthy.
Let's not pretend the NSA is fighting a war on terror. It's an economic espionage machine, and an assault on the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. The same constitution many men died to protect and uphold.
If honor, country, and integrity mean anything to employees of the NSA, they should perform their civic duty and do as the patriot Edward Snowden has done.
This seems to be completely unfounded, and out of line with my experience of the people who work there.
> they should perform their civic duty and do as the patriot Edward Snowden has done.
The truth is that you and I are part of a minority in the country: most people are actually vaguely okay with the idea of the government spy agency trawling through domestic networks looking for people trying to attack the US.
The NSA has owned the globe on a shoe string budget in response to a civic outcry about two decades back. They did their duty, as the people of the nation asked them to.
Now, you can argue that it was a poor national strategy -- that it's going to lead to a civic-society corrupting influence, and problems like parallel construction. But it's a bold allegation that people didn't do their duty because they struck a hard compromise that the majority approved of, but you personally don't.
> patriot
I wouldn't describe anyone who leaked legal spy programs or who took a laptop full of classified secrets to both China and Russia a patriot.
There were technical means by which Snowden could have better secured the materials, and there's the simple fact that he leaked a lot of perfectly legal military spy programs to the entire world, intentionally.
I'd certainly describe Snowden as an idealist, but he's not particularly a patriot.
As you may infer from current headlines - "The president told me to do it" is not exactly legal justification. We're a nation of checks and balances. If domestic spying is what the people wants then congress needs to act on that. For people intelligent enough to "own the globe" I don't see what's so confusing about this.
Bypassing the cornerstone of our democracy is not a heroic act. Spying on Americans by routing traffic through five-eyes is not clever or heroic. It's incredibly dangerous and represents an existential threat to our democracy. You can't even begin to imagine how blackmail will be used to silently and invisibly form the political landscape for the next 50 years.
Maybe Snowden isn't a patriot - but the NSA is a traitor to the American public.
And they have, repeatedly.
For all their bluster, the legislation that they've passed immunized the corporations who participated, left standing the punishment against Qwest (who didn't), and created new avenues to collect information in secret.
They held no one from either the Bush or Obama administrations, both of whom supported such programs, to account.
Congress did approve, modulo some theatrics, the actions of those administrations, because it's what people, that is, their constituents wanted.
> NSA is a traitor to the American public.
This kind of rhetoric when people didn't do what you personally wanted, but which much of the public did, isn't helpful and is a large portion of why the current politics are so toxic.
As far as anyone has been able to document, the NSA largely spends their time fighting terrorist organizations and hacking other nation-states -- doing things that legitimately keep safe Americans, in a world that isn't all that nice of a place.
It's trite to snipe at how the guards do their job, safe under their watch and without anything at risk -- particularly when you're also safely the minority, so don't run the risk of your opinions being put into action.
> can't even begin to imagine how blackmail will be used to silently and invisibly form the political landscape for the next 50 years
Good, I'm tired of lizard people.
Also, "Hoover-esque" comes to mind. Of course, the real danger for your conspiracy is the private consultancies and large corporations, which have considerably better access to information and substantially more sophisticated systems.
I'm personally considerably less worried about the NSA (or other government) archives and systems than the privateer ones, particularly in the age of rogue billionaires with aspirations of nation building -- to the point I'm willing to risk it to enable the nation to defend itself from, eg, another 2016-style PSYOP campaign.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Waving your hands and mouthing the word "Snowden" doesn't support just any defamatory statement you want to make about the government spy agencies -- and making up allegations cheapens the legitimate charges against them.
Scroll down to "United States", click on the reference links next to each illegal domestic surveillance programs. If the link yields another wiki page, keep clicking on the reference links util you find the relevant documents.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_mass_surv...
Neither snark nor a Wiki labyrinth are a specific citation for what you said: "The largest share of the data they collect is about Americans."
Nothing on that Wikipedia page supports that claim, and certainly not with a citation from the Snowden documents.
You're just bullshitting, and you're bullshitting on a serious topic like national security. It's transparent you're doing so, because you're citing non-specific things like a general Wikipedia page on the topic, after alleging a very serious thing was supported by the Snowden documents.
If you were serious, and being honest, you'd have cited a specific document. Or set of documents. Or an analysis which supported your position.
But you're not.
(Nor is that Wiki page: several things listed as mass surveillance are nothing of the sort, and just regular ol spy work against foreign targets.)