But the main point of the article is that the Obama administration justifies surveillance by saying it's critical to preventing terrorism, but that surveillance is being used for many many purposes beyond just counterterrorism, making it a poor case.
Being useful for one major thing doesn't mean that a tool is not also useful for other things. You can in fact point out as many other minor things as you wish, but that doesn't invalidate (by itself) the usefulness for the major task. So I don't see EFF's point here.
In fact that was the point I was about to make before screening the comments: "Of course NSA's powers extend beyond simple counterterrorism, who is claiming otherwise? Did they not read even a synopsis of the relevant law?"
Funny how the government keeps bringing up terrorism when people ask why the NSA is violating our privacy rights. Why is the government not pointing to all those other important American interests the NSA is protecting?
There are a lot of people on HN who think that the sole purpose of the NSA is terrorism. Most of these people can't be bothered to visit the front page of nsa.gov.
Let's not forget that this article was prompted by the NSA's universal, "because, terrorism" answer to virtually every "uncomfortable" question about its secret activities aimed at Americans.