Even if we accept that the NSA is comprised solely of benevolent actors practicing perfect discretion, and will remain so for the indefinite future, the mere ac

Even if we accept that the NSA is comprised solely of benevolent actors practicing perfect discretion, and will remain so for the indefinite future, the mere act of collecting "everything" is an enormous hazard. OP recognizes as much: CBS reported that in 2007 the US suffered an "espionage Pearl Harbor" in which entities "broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information." What's to stop this from happening again to the NSA? They couldn't even implement audit trails internally -- there should be huge doubt as to the agency's competence in securing their data. Also, OP, did you not hear about parallel construction? How do you rationalize your statement that the NSA "is not a law enforcement agency" in light of this? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...