Also, for what it is worth, NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear, biological and other weapons. That is fairly essential for upholding and enforcing international laws and treaties.
Finally I'm also confused when people say "domestic" tracking. Basically the NSA had databases they could look at if given legal authority to do so (meaning they think someone is a spy and show evidence of that) to see interactions between a person and other people (who they call, how often, where their phone is, etc). Apparently it seems now they just have to request or, like anyone else, buy that data from the telecoms instead of it being in house.
It's a good thing when long running rumors can be corroborated, so labeling this as non-info is somewhat unfair. News in Europe of cell towers listening-in on national parliaments discussion or phones being directly targeted, make scary headlines outside in Europe or anywhere outside US. This story drove home the same message to Americans: that it's not just something the NSA does overseas to "keep us save". The story also made sense since it continued the established narrative from previously published Snowden leaks in The Intercept.
> NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear, biological and other weapons
as a non US citizen, this deeply terrifies me (even without the current geo-policial climate).
edit: reduce waffle
GG has no doubt upset a lot of powerful people who want to see him fall professionally (or even worse). It's not surprising that he has his hands full on twitter fending off attacks. I don't think GG or his staff are only on Twitter in order to find scoops and topics for regurgitation (or that twitter is automatically a problem affecting the magazines output).
The Drone Papers[1] released in 2015 by Jeremy Scahill were an outstanding piece of writing.
In 2016 they revealed[2] that a AT&T site in NYC hosts a secret NSA surveillance site
It is probably hard to create such hits on a regular basis especially when their new content will always be judged on their previous (first) successes
I don't see the quality of their reporting being reduced though, but fwiw they did expand into a more mainstream political sphere which isn't always about tech-conspiracies (NSA, Snowden, Drone-papers) and so they have to compete with other outlets that cover the same stuff. If they have become less edgy (more "blah") than they used to be maybe less funding will be good for them and they'll find their roots again.
[1] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/
[2] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...