I'd go a step further. It shouldn't just be legally inadmissible, it shouldn't be collectable at all. If it's accidentally collected, it should immediately be purged and the responsible parties prosecuted. If the FBI wants to develop their own NSA-like capabilities for domestic law enforcement, they can do so in a targeted fashion with warrants, but the NSA should be focused entirely on overseas operations, just like the CIA, just like the military. Mixing foreign and domestic all up in one agency is a very bad idea, (I hope) for obvious reasons.

Well, in fact they did claim they stopped terrorist attacks, but that was later determined to be a complete fabrication.

At least with closed source you can just assume you're compromised, or trust the (known) people who put it out. Open source backdoors, if anybody even notices them (and let's be fair here, the NSA hires way smarter people than your average coder), will appear as accidental bugs, placed there anonymously. Open source is no more secure than closed source, for a host of reasons, but at least with closed source, you know where the code came from and can judge it based on that.

There is some indication that the NSA is a rampant bureaucracy run by geeks with an unlimited budget who do things just to see if they can, but that doesn't mean they haven't gotten useful information or accomplished anything significant. I'd say the destruction of Iranian centrifuges was a master stroke, personally.

Now, as for their domestic surveillance operations, I'd say it's pretty fair that they've not prevented any terrorist attacks whatsoever. That's the problem with broad collection of data, it's all the harder to sort through for anything useful. It's unfortunate that they're going to keep trying, instead of returning to targeted intelligence gathering.

Better check your compiler while you're at it, and your hardware.

Most diplomacy is economic in nature, what do you think the G8 is all about, or the WTO? Countries spy on each other to gain an upper hand in negotiations, much more than to gain an upper hand militarily. Since most of this diplomacy happens between friends, much of the spying happens between friends (or at least trade partners). Spying on Iran or North Korea may get most of the press, but don't let that fool you.

Is it embarrassing when this sort of thing comes out? Of course. Will countries go to war over it? Of course not. Germany is spying on us just as much as we're spying on them (or at least trying to), and everyone in the upper echelons of government in both countries know it. The reason this is even big news is because the German government doesn't want their own citizenry to start asking questions about German domestic spying. Best to keep the focus on Snowden and the US. Meanwhile I'm sure Merkel is furious more at her own security than the NSA.

Perhaps you should at least RTFS before you comment. I know this is Slashdot, and I'm not new here, but come on.

I don't disagree. I'm merely saying Snowden has gone beyond his alleged duty to the American people in revealing unconstitutional, broad warrantless domestic spying. I'm glad he's leaked that information, and I hope things are changed.

But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests. I'm not talking about the Federal Government's interests, but the interests of all Americans.

I think a legal definition of treason is what people are talking about.

Nothing is so black and white. He may have revealed some things that will help Americans understand what policy changes need to be made, but he's also revealing information about operations the NSA is supposed to be doing, and now there's talk of him helping foreign governments in exchange for asylum. I'd say that makes him a naive idealist, at best.

It's increasingly clear that Snowden is being "handled" though. We shouldn't overlook the fact that he is a prime target for exploitation, by the Russians, by whoever ends up with him. If he does indeed go to Germany and help them defeat NSA spying in that country, well then the treason label fits.

I don't have any problem with Snowden revealing mass surveillance on American citizens to American citizens, but spying on foreign governments is what the NSA is supposed to do. Yes, even our allies, and yes, even for economic reasons (most spying is economic in nature, and every ally spies on every ally). Snowden's reveal of spying on foreign governments and leaders, and any methods to do so, does cross a definite line. That does actually harm the US diplomatically, harms US businesses, and harms those American citizens Snowden claims to support. Snowden may be a naive idealist in over his head, or he may have been "turned" by those who are currently surrounding him.

Never once heard of anyone referring to "B-School" before during my own time in college. I did actually have to take one class in the business school, come to think of it. The material covered was so obvious and easy, it did nothing but reinforce my amusement that anyone would waste their time getting a degree in that place. Like most others here, I imagine, I was busy getting a degree in a technical field and most of my friends were also in technical or scientific fields. We occasionally made fun of the business school people, but that was about the entirety of our thought about them.

Anyway, my peers were too busy building an autonomous robot car for a DARPA competition to care much about college nicknames. Individual colleges were mostly referenced by acronym, actually. Maybe the "B-School" people called it something different than the rest of us, but it was "C.O.B." to everyone else.

There are going to have to be anti-theft measures on these drones, which will inevitably result in a loss of privacy. Every drone will have multiple cameras and other sensors on it constantly active and relaying back to Amazon as they fly over your backyard and skylights. Even if Amazon takes measures to, say, auto-delete these recordings as soon as the drone returns home, who's to say every Amazon employee is trustworthy enough not to tap into the feed, or that the next company to launch a fleet of drones won't be a little less concerned with privacy.

Before long we're going to have to accept that with robotics and automation approaching full-blown AI, our economy needs to transform to something very different, or we're going to end up with most people out of work and only the people who own the robots will have any money at all.

Eventually, we'll get into some kind of energy credit post-scarcity thing where humans no longer need to labor at all and just have a basic right to a fraction of the total robotic output, but it's going to be a very messy transition.

If you really believe that every world government does not spy on other world governments, you're an idiot. If you think that friends don't spy on friends, you're an idiot. The NSA has a bigger budget, and probably more expertise and technology, but every country is doing it.

All this supposed outrage by foreign leaders is simply to deflect attention from the fact that these same foreign leaders are currently spying on their own citizens just as much as the NSA is spying on US citizens. These foreign leaders don't want their citizens to ask questions about the other revelations, here, about a government spying on its own citizens, and instead be distracted by something that is obvious yet rarely talked about. Otherwise, the citizens of Germany might have questions about what intelligence the German government is collecting on them, for example.

All the American citizens outraged that the NSA is spying on foreign government officials are absolutely crazy. That's the NSA's job, you fools. You should be outraged that the NSA is spying on YOU, decidedly against its mission statement, and in violation of your constitutional rights. I for one am glad the NSA is spying on foreign heads of state.