Consider it from the position of somebody in "upper management". 1. Technology lets a NSA employee do orders of magnitude more work than a Stasi employee. 2.

Consider it from the position of somebody in "upper management". 1. Technology lets a NSA employee do orders of magnitude more work than a Stasi employee. 2. Every employee may be a traitor or merely overly ambitious, but gains knowledge of how to evade detection while obtaining privileged information and taking advantage of it as a side-effect of working for you. As your organization grows you have to spend a lot of resources on internal policing. 3. Fewer employees also means fewer potential whistle-blowers. Even without budgetary constraints, the NSA is well motivated to employ a much smaller percentage of the population than the Stasi did, assuming they are equally invasive. The ideal they are probably striving for is a completely automated NSA that reports only to the glorious leader.