[belorn]

Let me add a few others:

1) Every nation should protect their citizens against intelligence gathering from outsiders. 2) Intelligence-gathering must be subject of the rule of law. 3) Military forces must be under democratic control.

Surely, neither of those are controversial either?

[mpyne]

No, not even in the U.S. where all 3 conditions are in effect (unless you mean to quibble about oligarchy vs. democracy, in which case that's a whole 'nother level of argument).

[belorn]

I guess you could argue the definition of "protect", but sabotaging security standards and hording security vulnerabilities is not it.

And if the rule of law require says every citizen is protected against warrant-less searches, you can not "steal" personal information about those citizens when it rest in care of a service provider.

But I take it that what is controversial is not that every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy. The controversy how an intelligence-gathering agency may behave.