in order to fulfill their mandate to protect their country from its enemies, they need as much information about the actions of their enemies as possible. But

in order to fulfill their mandate to protect their country from its enemies, they need as much information about the actions of their enemies as possible. But who is the enemy, and who defines them? Terrorist watch lists now contain over a million names in the US alone - are all those people plausible terrorists? Spy agencies now routinely record the communications of entire populations, domestic and foreign, and use that information for economic and political gain (why else spy on Petrobras and G20?). Terrorism seems to be the least of their preoccupations given the focus of their spying. There is definitely a balance to be struck between a spying agency with effective oversight on their tremendous powers, pursuing only that tiny minority considered dangerous enemies who actively plan to attack (worldwide that is probably in the hundreds, or at most the thousands of people), and a spying agency which views surveilling entire populations, assassination en masse, denying travel, subverting encryption, and even spying on and lying to the politicians who oversee them as acceptable. Unfortunately at present we find ourselves at one extreme of that continuum.