Interesting point that the NSA spends billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars, along with some of the most sophisticated technology on the planet to catch b-level smugglers and criminals.
Contractors, infrastructure, PR, salaries, promotions, training. That has been put into place.
Well it was there to spy on the Soviets. Then it was kind of sitting there waiting for a problem. And the problem was found. Terrorism. Drugs. Could be something else tomorrow. As long as Joe Smith in SIGINT department 15 gets his salary paid, he doesn't care. As long as L3 or whoever gets to build another data center they don't care. They will all collectively find some reason to justify it, but underneath, quite often is just making more money keeping busy.
They made the mistake though (mistake from their point of view), that one of the characteristics they look for in people they hire is patriotism. That can very very dangerous if eventually those people are forced to do un-patriotic things (or things they can't brainwash them into thinking they are patriotic). You end up with Binney and Snowden then.
All organisms want to survive (political, economic, etc). Now if the NSA could just deem cancer a threat to the national security of the country then they could put their super computer power to good use.
http://leaksource.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/booz-allen-map...
It is missing Clapper. He came from Booz.
This happens with other agencies as well. FDA is full of future and past heads from agro-businesses and pharma companies. FCC is full of people from cable and satellite companies and so on.
This is capitalism at work. Achieve success by whatever means possible. The easiest means is the get in the position to re-write rules and police yourself.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories but this kind-of points to the NSA working for the DEA working for the prison corporations.
neither side, funding the act or trying to stop it