Thank you again for taking the time to write an well formed response.

Regarding LOVEINT and nude pictures. I think it's difficult to evaluate whether the punishments are actually worthy of the abuses and it's hard to know what the culture inside the NSA is, and it is also hard to know how widespread these abuses are and what affect they may have. They are examples of citizens being hurt by the programs, but agree that they are not (AFAWK) examples of systemic abuse.

I agree that the trading of nude pictures was asserted without evidence. I don't know what internal documents they would keep on that, and Snowden has thus far been a very well-spoken and trustworthy source of information. I won't claim it as a fact, but this sort of thing feeds into my last point from the last thread.

> every one of the 5 people listed by Greenwald has "FBI" in the responsible agency column

Left hand, right hand. The FBI, NSA, CIA, DOD, CSS, etc work with one another. Did the targeting utilize information or capabilities from the NSA?

I would be very interested if the Muslim leaders turned out to be connected to terrorism. They have not been arrested if they are associated with terrorism - I'm not sure what to make of that besides they are just being watched for their prominent role as community leaders.

Overall point regarding Greenwald. He is an advocate for adversarial journalism. He will accuse the government of more than is certain in an attempt to provoke more information/clarification or force them to contradict themselves (as happened frequently at the start of the Snowden disclosures). People feel differently about this. I feel that it is necessary to combat the other side of journalism which trades media spin and coverage for access and sources and shows its belly to USG on the regular.

> Could you provide an example of this?

Yes. I'm going to copy a list from a Bruce Schneier post (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/iphone_encryp...).

* The Greek cellphone intercept system was attacked by an unattributed group.

* The Italian cellphone intercept system was attacked similarly.

* China hacked into the Google's US Government request system.

* The Syrian Electronic Army hacked into Microsoft's FBI data request group.

* The US cellphone intercept system has been hacked by unattributed groups.

> And this is where I differ from most of the tech community. The solution isn't to take away technical capability because it could be abused in the future, it's to craft laws and policies to limit what the NSA can do with its technical capability and provide effective oversight. I don't think anyone from even before the Snowden disclosures has argued for less oversight.

I think we'd agree here, but we'd likely disagree on what is reasonable. As things currently stand all data is sucked up and kept for longer than 5 years for later inspection. I think it's reasonable for the intelligence community and law enforcement to track individual users, but I do not think it is a good idea to track everyone all the time and limit only by policy and paper what can be inspected.

I find that surveillance, be it by law enforcement, management at my company, my parents, or by a stalker to impede on my right to be secure in my person. I find that legal compulsion for some private individuals to keep files on other individuals is a circumvention of the spirit of the law - and in fact one applied by the Stasi.

The difference between in-house operations, hiring of private surveillance contractors and legal compulsion on private citizens is a blurry one to me. "No means no."

I also find it 'dirty' that the FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) should have any say in domestic issues at all. They do not represent the Constitution nor are they are not subject to a system of checks and balances outside of self-policing (I am aware of the review panel suggestions regarding this).

> For some reason, though, everyone seems to assume that given the fact that the NSA has enormous technical resources for gathering foreign intelligence that could be abused

Provided fairly recent systemic abuses of intelligence power (COINTELPRO, etc) I don't think these reactions are particularly absurd. Similar to how journalism may have to be partially adversarial, so does the relationship of men to their governments. Men need to ask what is being done, how it is being done and why it is being done. They need to demand honestly from their governments.

I would also ask that you reply to my last point regarding principles (the 'organ donation' one).

Finally, there are some other examples of individuals who have been harmed.

The founder of Lavabit certainly was harmed for providing an email service - his business is now forever underwater and he was served to go to a jury-less court (with all the stress and financial requirements therein).

The CEO of Qwest (Nacchio) claims that (both personal and business-scale) leverage was used to force the direction of his company and resulted in his indictment and arrest.