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So, according to the latest Snowden leak, the NSA is not only doing a lot of stuff we didn't know about, it's also breaking its own rules, to the tune of several thousand "irregularities" per year. Now, most of it seems to be relatively minor; fishing with too wide a net is the worst of the specifics. Much of the rest is just random incompetence, like entering the wrong area code and failing to report the resulting accidental-surveillance of thousands of people. Also, not letting their nominal-supervision court know about a new collection method until after it had been in place for several months. They've apparently been scrubbing their reports to Congress, too, but that's pretty much a given. And this is all from a year-old audit of only the D.C. area facilities.
On the bright side, I don't see anything about spying on people with no authorization whatsoever, unless that's what's meant by the phrase "did not follow standard operating procedures." No, wait, there's this: "The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders." But, in general, it sounds like our spooks are merely bumbling, and not actually sinister, at this time. Since most of their vigilance is utterly superfluous, I'm cautiously marking this down as "good news." If we lived in a world where terrorists posed an actual, significant threat, that would of course be a totally different scenario.
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