One of the greatest arguments against the invasions of privacy they're engaged in is such competence by government departments is absolutely impossible, and the

One of the greatest arguments against the invasions of privacy they're engaged in is such competence by government departments is absolutely impossible, and the only way around this is to not collect the information in the first place. If you create a department that knows everything about everyone then it creates such a big single point of failure that it will be attacked continuously. This is on top of the general human error leading to data dumps being left on public transport etc. A honest and competent version of the NSA would acknowledge that leaks would be going to occur (malicious or accidental) and that it would need to be very careful about what it collects in case it could be used against it when it leaks. Once more government secrecy is actually just a way of hiding incompetence.