Can we really trust the NSA?
I have to agree with tacit. But on the chance of sounding political, things also depend on your point of view. Where it wasn’t expertly ambiguous, the NSA has proven to be reliably unreliable in its public comments on its activities, so the answer for the public has to be: absolutely not. From the point of view of government agencies tasked with ‘maintaining’ national security, the answer may very well be: absolutely! I strongly suspect that the ‘philosophy’ underlying surreptitious activities without authorization won’t change, and if it isn’t one argument that supposedly justifies it, it’ll be another. Again, and for good or for bad, the only thing you can be sure of is that no official answer to any such question will ever be fully trustworthy, reliable or complete. Unfortunately, you don’t need to be a conspiracy buff to feel that way.
Btw, that also applies to sunset provisions in national security related legislation. They are somewhat of a boondoggle, since they have rarely if ever worked as the public is led to believe. History shows that such laws don’t ’expire’ but tend to get back on the books by majority votes, with the tacit understanding that if ever something happens that just might have been prevented by the laws in question, the blame would squarely fall on those who vote(d) against it. So rather than reassure, such provisions should give one pause.
