> they face extensive civilian oversight and programs like their metadata collection were extensively debated in public
Most democratically elected representatives don't know what the NSA is up to. The Director of National Intelligence directly lied in his public testimony when asked about NSA collection. It took a whistleblower to reveal even the basic outline of the NSA's massive surveillance powers, which the civilian population was unaware of. That whistleblower now has to live in Russia, or else he'd be rotting away in jail, or worse. The metadata program was only extensively debated after those revelations, and we civilians are still in the dark about what the NSA does. I don't trust that they've stopped their mass surveillance of Americans. A massive organization that acts with such little oversight is a danger to democracy, regardless of what it claims in public.
Most democratically elected representatives don't know what the NSA is up to. The Director of National Intelligence directly lied in his public testimony when asked about NSA collection. It took a whistleblower to reveal even the basic outline of the NSA's massive surveillance powers, which the civilian population was unaware of. That whistleblower now has to live in Russia, or else he'd be rotting away in jail, or worse. The metadata program was only extensively debated after those revelations, and we civilians are still in the dark about what the NSA does. I don't trust that they've stopped their mass surveillance of Americans. A massive organization that acts with such little oversight is a danger to democracy, regardless of what it claims in public.