Why not? It is technically feasible. There was essentially no legal oversight at NSA or GCHQ.
It seems like they responded correctly to the incentives they were given. The problem is with the legislature (and the judiciary), voters, and the media.
It seems like they responded correctly to the incentives they were given. The problem is with the legislature (and the judiciary), voters, and the media.
I'm just going to assume you were being sarcastic and move on.
So, because it's not hurting them in terms of success to operate this way, there's a need for external controls to prevent it. If being all-collecting hurt their effectiveness, we wouldn't need any new controls, because they'd be replaced for being unsuccessful.
Plus, the inevitable outrage generated when these tactics became public is undeniably hurting their credibility and in the long term their ability to gather information.
Except that their mission is deeply compromised by their actions: they've lowered domestic cyber-security, undermined the rule of law, and deeply shaken the public confidence in the armed forces - all of which are contrary to their core mission.
They seem to have lost sight of their high level goals in their quest for more power to accomplish specific secondary tasks.
What incentives were those? To create a police state with kind of distopian program "Overseer"? Because that's exactly what they are doing.
The problem is with the legislature (and the judiciary), voters, and the media.
The more subtle point that the parent makes is that, rather than always trying to prevent bad actors from doing bad things (e.g. murdering), a working system of checks and balances can punish the bad actors and deter future abuses. But checks and balances obviously don't work when everything is classified. The legislature and the judiciary were essentially the only two institutions that had access to this information and they did nothing about it.
You can't vote judges out of office, but if large scale surveillance is an issue important to you I'd make sure my congressman or congresswoman knew about it.