[Kalium]

Decrypting cellphone traffic is also a means. It's a means towards information and human connections and so on. That's the sort of stuff that can make or break an operation.

Did it? Has it? Unknown.

The trouble with intelligence is that it's only effective when done with secrecy and fairly broad latitude to operate. There are few easy answers here.

[delluminatus]

A fairly broad latitude? If the ends justify the means and yet the ends themselves are kept completely hidden, then the latitude, as you put it, is completely unconstrained. An intelligence agency operating under those principles can literally do anything claiming that it is for the greater good.

In short, it sounds like you are advocating for an agency which can take arbitrary extralegal action at its own discretion, without providing reason or explanation, and without providing any demonstrable benefit to anybody, because it's secret.

Frankly, I find the idea terrifying. I understand that intelligence agencies need some quantity of secrecy and some degree of latitude. Like you have repeatedly stated, there are no easy answers. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask the question. What the hell are these people doing, and should we let them continue? What is growing in our intelligence sector -- is it an institution that will be found to have brought the world benefit, like Bletchley Park, or will it be seen to have become a thin facade over a malignant, self-interested organization, potentially culminating in something like a secret police?

[abecedarius]

We have a secret police now: what else do you call an organization that secretly collects information against the nation's own citizens to be secretly passed along for 'parallel construction'? That kept this policy itself a secret? Theoretically it's as a byproduct of foreign intelligence-gathering, not a primary function, but this frog feels the pot to be plenty hot already.

[mirimir]

I agree, except for "now". That's clear from Bamford's books. For example, federal charges against the Weather Underground Organization were dropped in late 1973 after a screwup in parallel construction. In 1973, hardly any civilians had ever heard of the NSA (aka "No Such Agency") and they wanted to keep it that way.

[Kalium]

You misread me. I am not advocating for anything. I am commenting on the constraints and issues of the problem space.