"[Montesquieu wrote in his Spirit of the Laws XII,c.12:] 'Words carried into action assume the nature of that action. Thus a man who goes into a public market-place to incite the subject to revolt incurs the guilt of high treason, because the words are joined to the action, and partake of its nature. It is not the words that are punished, but an action in which words are employed. They do not become criminal, but when they are annexed to a criminal action: everything is confounded if words are construed into a capital crime, instead of considering them only as a mark of that crime.'" --Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book.
As our Framers knew, standing armies were justified as defense against foreign enemies. In time, they were always turned inward to defend the Prince from internal opposition.
Such is the NSA.