Okay--When is a secretive intelligence-gathering apparatus too big?

Um, when even the President might not know who and what they are spying on?

The idea that spying on world leaders might have been authorized some time ago, and then just operated as an on-going project, without the direct okay of the current president, kind of sounds a bit off, doesn't it? It seems to me though, that this is exactly what could happen in a ginormous apparatus with significant leeway on a basic level. The point of having things loose is being specifically able to do things that aren't necessarily policy, but might be temporarily deemed useful intelligence-gathering methods. So let's say some officially-used lines are monitored to understand who is calling who and talking to who to get a picture of what alliances are out there--what good is it?




That's the problem. With monitoring the calls of suspect persons, you have a defined goal--what are they going to do and when are they going to do it? Monitoring international heads of state is more like, I dunno, recording gossip? There might be some utility in monitoring those lines--for trade information, maybe, but that isn't necessarily national security-level intell. In the end, it's more of a diplomatic liability than a benefit if the monitoring ever got exposed, like, you know, now. 

I can sympathize with the Obama Administration having to shut this down over the summer over concerns that the Snowden revelations would cause a major freakout, but it looks like we are gonna have one anyway. And I sympathize with the many heads of state who might be wondering what cast-off thing they ever said or which contact made created a surveillance-level security threat--as if that was the criteria when whatever open-ended warrant was signed to make some other country's business our own.

I do believe the NSA might very well require some very stringent oversight. Here's hoping a lesson is learned. Also, that future presidents aren't blindsided by intelligence they should have known was being gathered. It's...(obscene, overstepping, absurd) most unseemly.