For the Intel world, incompetence and failure is even more damaging than morally questionable methods or recruitments.
It seems to me the USA alone has a black budget of $50 billion + with very little to show for it.
Add to that the rest of the Five Eyes spending and you have huge surveillance budgets with not a lot of real successes.
Since the intelligence agencies’ operate is secret, the general public is almost entirely unable to make a reasoned judgement about the quality of its work product. The real and larger problem is the deliberate misuse of the intelligence agencies for improper domestic political purposes.
Supposedly, the massive intelligence effort by the US and the Five Eyes is highly effective. They cannot be held responsible for bad policies and decisions by US leaders.