The NSA is supposed to bug foreigners, not US citizens.
That's how I see it, and yes, that means all foreigners.
I expect foreigners (all of them) to try to tap our government's communications too, and I expect the NSA and CIA to try to stop it.
If Snowden had revealed that we are NOT listening to foreign leaders, I'd say we should just fire the NSA for not doing their job. His big revelation on foreign intelligence gathering seems to be that we are doing it. Wow. Earth shattering.
The mass collection of phone, email, text message and other domestic communications is both unnecessary and dangerous to liberty. It was also illegal and the NSA apparently knew
it would be better to ask forgiveness than permission from the FISA court.
“For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.
They knew what they were doing was wrong and misled the FISA court to hide it. Snowden knew what they were doing was wrong and ruined his own life to expose it. History will decide who were the heroes and who were the villains.