I find I want to reply, but I don't know how to do that without getting wrapped up in a discussion that's too easy to be misinterpreted or dismissed here as pol

I find I want to reply, but I don't know how to do that without getting wrapped up in a discussion that's too easy to be misinterpreted or dismissed here as political. I think you are conflating a few issues. On the one hand there is the bipartisan surveillance issue that Snowden shined a light on. More recently we have a bunch of Trump and anti-Trump narratives and sometimes conspiracy theories. I suspect some people on the thread have squished those into one. But the intelligence community is likely complicated, motivations multi-faceted, people holding diverse opinions. I don't think these things are the same, or you can dismiss or endorse one cause for the other.