Right, don't attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence. The problem is that when it's the NSA et. al, the spies, incompetence is treated

Right, don't attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence. The problem is that when it's the NSA et. al, the spies, incompetence is treated as less likely than manipulation. I really don't know whether this is correct; I just know the underlying assumption of incompetence might not be warranted in every case.