The NSA and Its “Compliance Problems” - Ben O'Neill - Mises Daily

The NSA and Its “Compliance Problems” - Ben O'Neill - Mises Daily: "For ordinary citizens, “compliance problems” with the law are better known as “crimes” (or possibly civil wrongs) and these lead to judgment debts, fines, and possibly even jail time, depending on the severity of the lack-of-compliance. But for government officials such notions are irrelevant — legal compliance problems are just something you file a report about, and send to another bureaucrat higher up in the government chain, so that he can bury it on his desk."

"[The NSA] has claimed that it may collect any and all information it wishes without any warrant or restriction, and that this does not constitute real “collection” of data unless the database is later queried. In other words, collection of data is not really collection of data, so long as the data sits idle and is not accessed. It has then claimed that querying of its databases is only ever done under warrant and only under circumstances where there are specific facts to yield a reasonable suspicion of terrorist activity."

"The agency then operates above the law, in the sense that its agents are pre-emptively acquitted of lawbreaking, on the grounds that some degree of non-compliance with the law is expected."