> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. That the NSA doesn't need any form of oversight, and can be 100% trusted with the power to snoop on everybody bel

> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. That the NSA doesn't need any form of oversight, and can be 100% trusted with the power to snoop on everybody belonging to any country That's not at all what I'm trying to say. In fact I would argue very strong oversight is needed, but I'd also argue that very strong oversight is possible in the first place, which means that oversight (or not) is not the proper reason to argue about the very existence of the program in the first place. In other words, the program(s) are either required or not. If they are required, determine the needed level of oversight and install it. If it's not required, then it's not required and discussions about oversight are simply redundant.