It's several things beyond just the lack of warrants. It the opportunistic monitoring as opposed to the targeted monitoring and the activities beyond their jurisdiction. Parallel construction to me suggests that they have been funded with so much cash that they now have enough money to fund scope creep beyond their jurisdiction. They should never had had more cash than they needed to do their job.
I personally would like to see the NSA organization around defense and not offense. Make better tools to protect us. Don't backdoor things since any backdoor they have can be discover and used by others. etc.
Worth a read:
"How the NSA could stop sucking and be awesome instead" by Ted Dziuba:
On can sensibly argue that passively reading traffic is defensive. Infiltrating computers, planting bugs, and actively eavesdropping is more of an offensive stance. Listening to what everyone says in a public square (the internet) is comparatively passive.
The trouble is that, in aggregate, the knowledge acquired is powerful and transcends time-honored boundaries.
I personally would like to see the NSA organization around defense and not offense. Make better tools to protect us. Don't backdoor things since any backdoor they have can be discover and used by others. etc.
Worth a read: "How the NSA could stop sucking and be awesome instead" by Ted Dziuba:
http://teddziuba.com/post/58735980543/how-the-nsa-could-stop...