First of all, to hell with Snowden. He asked for it.

Also

re: #2 Political Atheist

The NSA side has admitted it is gathering and keeping vast amounts of metadata that is not relevant to any particular investigation.

Its kinda hard to perform any particular investigation into someone’s communications without access to metadata. You can’t trust that any particular telecommunications company is going to to keep said data indefinitely. So “collect now, put under microscope later” is a practical necessity.

Sorry PA, I’ll have to downding you over this.

On the other hand, I agree on the part about how internal controls aren’t enough. At the very least, greater transparency is needed. I want to see that nobody’s being investigated without a warrant, not merely be told that. We should be able to know, not merely trust, but know, that our constitutional rights aren’t being violated. The principle of the thing and all that.

I’m torn on this. I don’t want to deny law enforcement the tools needed in today’s age. And yet, I can’t quite trust them with that power. I’m simply not complacent with secretive oversights. I just don’t have faith in faith.