Opinion of the National Security Agency

[bedstuy]

I don't blame the NSA.  The problem is the Congress and political people in the executive branch.

Politicians don't want to define what the NSA can and cannot do.  On one hand, politicians don't want to explicitly tell American that our spies can do X, Y and Z, because they'll be criticized by civil libertarians and people in the opposing party who are temporarily libertarian.  On the other  hand, politicians don't want to hamstring our intelligence services and find themselves blamed for a terrorist attack.  In addition, because the NSA is secret, politicians can never really take credit and boast about how their NSA policies worked. 

Basically, political interests are served by taking a totally hand-off attitude and delegating their policy-making authority to the NSA.  Unfortunately, that's exactly what we don't want.  The NSA shouldn't be deciding how much power they have.  I would be 100% OK with the NSA if we could define their role and subject them to legislative and judicial accountability.