> You seem to be assuming that if [...] an agency is officially subject to law, it will never act contrary to law. Well, of course. If we instead assume that a

> You seem to be assuming that if [...] an agency is officially subject to law, it will never act contrary to law. Well, of course. If we instead assume that agencies will simply ignore the law, then of course any process is meaningless. But if that is your assumption, we might as well give up now. Of course bad things could happen if agencies start breaking the law, but if there is no evidence of systemic law-breaking, it's not really useful to bring up. It should be pretty evident that even the NSA attempts to ensure that everything it does is legal, and in fact goes out of its way to do things in a convoluted and obfuscated fashion to ensure the legality of some of its actions.