The key message is that for years the Obama administration was mining the incomparable database of the National Security Agency (NSA), which captured virtually all electronic communications – emails, text messages, everything – launched into the ether.
The potential for abuse is breathtaking. Everything that political enemies said to each other, except in private in-person conversations or in snail mail letters, could have been spied upon. And now it looks like staggering numbers of intercepts were monitored. Dyer makes that case:
What will blow the whole thing wide open is simply this: laying bare the nexus of the operation at the National Security Council staff.
Not among the principals; i.e., the “big officials,” like Susan Rice, James Clapper, or John Brennan. (snip)
No, the pot of gold is among the worker bees (including “czar” appointees). The people who actually sat at computers and used them, to do things the principals could authorize, but didn’t keyboard-jockey themselves, because NSC principals aren’t your keyboard jockeys.
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Good article, worth reading including some of the links.