I've noticed all along that the NSA is relying VERY heavily on the idea that an automated system collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from spied data

I've noticed all along that the NSA is relying VERY heavily on the idea that an automated system collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from spied data is entirely legal so long as no humans are involved. This was the legal defense that whistleblowers claimed they were using (but which has never been tested in court, and they would like to avoid that testing of course) years ago. And for some reason I can't guess, everyone seems to just be going along with it. "Oh, agents don't have easy access to our personal information? You've just got it all recorded on your servers and you constantly datamine it, but the analysts only look at outputs from the mining and not the specific data? Well OK then" seems to be the response of the press at least.