I’ve made the point that the NSA cannot be trusted to decide upon whom it spies, because its cultural imperative is to spy on Everyone.

Case in point, NSA spying on human rights advocacy groups:

The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe’s top human rights body.

Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency – for which he worked as a contractor – had deliberately snooped on bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

He told council members: “The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations … including domestically within the borders of the United States.” Snowden did not reveal which groups the NSA had bugged.

The assembly asked Snowden if the US spied on the “highly sensitive and confidential communications” of major rights bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups. He replied: “The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely.”

Snowden, meanwhile, dismissed NSA claims that he had swiped as many as 1.7m documents from the agency’s servers in an interview with Vanity Fair. He described the number released by investigators as “simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.”

The NSA is supposed to operate in a manner that serves the greater needs of the state.

The problem is that it is incapable of making a determination.  It’s like a mindless vacuum cleaner sucking up data whether it serves our needs or not.

This is why it is incumbent on the civilian leadership cannot let the NSA on a loose leash.