> Imagine an NSA contractor or employee with a gambling problem who needs cash. Your data is now their ticket out of trouble.

Even today there are NSA analysts who have tried to lookup their ex-wives, and been caught and terminated. And that's just leaving it to NSA's own accountability measures, imagine what we could do if we actually added real oversight!

A dumb analyst could inside trade large amounts by eavesdropping on privileged conversations with a corporation and its public auditor (and eventually be caught for the size of transactions).

A sophisticated NSA analyst could make many trades with inside information and avoid raising alarm by making off-the-radar trades.

"...Your data is now their ticket out of trouble..."

And their ticket into prison.

Indeed because addicts never make poor or irrational over the long-term decisions.

I doubt the NSA would build such a sophisticated system without layers of security and extensive audit trails to prevent misuse. If not only because misuse of the system would be a disaster for the NSA and potentially be a bigger national security problem than what the system is designed to prevent in the first place.

Yet by the very nature of a secret agency you will never know what safeguards they have or how effective they are. Plus there are a lot of really really smart people likely working there who know exactly how everything works. Aldrich Ames took advantage of his position and knowledge to out CIA spies for years.

If a budget is tight, one of the first things to go is accountability and oversight. Social Security Insurance is a perfect example of this. If the program had more earmarked toward tracking the cases of abuse taxpayers wouldn't be able to complain about those that exploit it (as much).