I agree that the blame is shared - the appeal of ubiquitous surveillance and related is just too great for any executive branch to resist at least right now. I'

I agree that the blame is shared - the appeal of ubiquitous surveillance and related is just too great for any executive branch to resist at least right now. I'm not entirely sure about congress, I think mostly they're just easily manipulated. But, I know quite a few folks who work for fort meade both govies and contractors, and it seems pretty clear to me that the nsa has significantly mutated in terms of their internal culture, goals and morality in the last 20 years. Primarily 2001+. I think most of them would agree with that though they might not consider it as bad as I do. Based on how gen Alexander frequently takes his narrative straight to the press (+10 2-3 full page section A stories in the washington post in the last 12 months alone) and some other factors I honestly believe that organization has a life of its own and would at least take an unusual amount of effort to train. Comparing them to the CIA it's very telling. WHile the CIA has traditionally done a lot of shit and been the "cowboys" if you will, they give the impression of an organization (today) that is much less prone to systemically "go rogue". Not that I'm implying the NSA programs aren't with executive branch blessing. Just that if by some miracle you got someone running the show that didn't want to spy on every item on the earth, they might find it pretty hard to shut down the machine. My (uninformed opinion) is that it mostly came from the sick, sick amounts of money they started getting post 911 as a big part - someone who knows the situation pretty well guessed that they may in fact be up 600% in total buget (combined) as compared to around y2k. The second biggest factor was the intelligance community reorginization 10ish years ago that created the DNI and has everyone including the NSA and CIA reporting to them. As an outsider, it seems the DNI never quite managed to be a strong enough organization to keep these proudly independent orgs under their control and working together. Both groups were thus left to do battle and arguable the NSA won at least budget wise, though CIA ultimately managed to bypass their boss and regain a quasi-independant status at least with Obama. The last bit is tech, even though it's obvious. Things are just sickly out of balance now in terms of ease of surveillance, data storage, etc in favor of the eavesdroppers. It's like taking a junkie who's been pretty functional for 20 years and locking them in a room with unlimited drugs, strippers and so much money they make it rain just by walking. Who could resist? Whatever other mistakes are being made (and there are plenty) the NSA is a big, lumbering, arrogant agency filled with political power. We've got to shoot it in the head and start over.