It's pretty straightforward to quantify how good a football defensive team is.

> We had 5 sacks, 3 interceptions, and limited the opposing offense to 200yards gained.

Is obviously better than

> We had 0 sacks, 0 interceptions, and the opposing offense took 400 yards.

Even if in both games the opposing offense scored the same number of points.

I agree, it's not a perfect analogy. I think the point stands.

I think his point is it possible to quantify what the NSA does and not reveal anything classified. Similar to how you can quantify how good a football defense is even if you don't know every play, or anything about their strategies, who is on there team, how many players were on the field.

Are there many/any government agencies that quantify things to validate their existence?

Schools have tests. I get a newsletter from my local government a few times a year that says how they are spending my money, especially if they are pushing for a levy. Any program that is in jeopardy of losing funding publishing some sort of "this is why you should keep giving us money" like NASA or an arts program. For example: https://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

I think the point is, it's your/our fucking money, and they should be.

We're here arguing about whether the defense is any good at their job, but nobody's asking about the long-term CTE caused by the team playing the game in the first place.

If we as a populous were good coaches/managers, we'd be using the players to protect our house, and alert us to better ways to secure it.