> It's certainly not beyond the capabilities of the NSA to target powerful people that oppose the NSA while ignoring those that support them. I had to think so

> It's certainly not beyond the capabilities of the NSA to target powerful people that oppose the NSA while ignoring those that support them. I had to think something similar when I read this in your parent post: if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim. That is, how do we know for a fact the NSA missed this? Could it not also simply have not acted on it, for whatever reasons? E.g. I know on the surface it's in the interest of the US to have "stability" in the Middle East, but even former CIA people have been warning since the buildup to the Iraq war, that some strategies and tactics can lead to more terrorism, more instability. And then exactly that happened, because their warnings were not heeded. Am I to believe that was incompetence? I know this borders on tinfoil terrority, but I really don't mean to outright claim what my questions might imply, I am just wondering and genuinely curious/clueless, I don't read news regularly, so I have no idea what the NSA having no idea about the Ukraine and ISIS stuff is referring to.