Espionage against a country that has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at you, and practices using them, is a very responsible thing to do, and very much sanctioned by government.
Well then by your logic, spying on US citizens by the US government is perfectly fine, since it would count at 'espionage against a country that has 10,000 nukes, used it a couple of times to incinerate a few 100ks people, and is very much sanctioned by government".
Seems the exact same reasoning to me. Especially since we're talking about US, which just revoked visas to international court prosecutor, which dared to suggest an investigation, which would look into any possible war crimes that US soldiers may have commited in Afghanistan ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47822839 ).
A country which so aggresively attacks a person that merely suggests to look into possible breakage of a law cannot have clean hands or be trustworthy.