The same people who are complaining that the NSA is spying on Germans and foreign nationals over in Europe are the same folks who’d complain if the US missed the chance to spot a plot like 9/11 before it happened.

We’d just have to forget that there was a Hamburg, Germany cell that was ultimately involved in the attacks - Atta was among those participating. Imagine if the NSA had tools and the means to pick up this particular cell before they went into operational mode? A whole lot of things could have ended up differently.

Spying has been part of international relations from the time of the Bible (heck, doesn’t anyone remember that the Israelites sent spies into Israel to check up on who’s who and what’s what?). But now we’ve got a group of folks who think that any kind of spying is bad, so they’re going to reveal all the horrible details - which turn out to be not nearly as horrible as alleged.

And allegations of bad things are all that Greenwald and others are proffering.