Does anyone else find this a bit excessive? I mean I'm still a bit uneasy about the NSA spying on it's own citizens, but the rest of the world? And not in sketchy third world countries either. Nations that are our allies, such as France, Germany and the UK.

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Nations have been spying on nations ever since Moses sent Joshua, Caleb and 10 others to check out Canaan for the Children of Israel. Much of the current NSA activity is important, or potentially important, to American national security. The problem is when it becomes institutionalized and routinized, without periodic, tough-edged checks for relevance. It becomes a government "entitlement"--"we can spy on whoever we want because we can."

Every President should recognize the grave dangers in unsupervised spying. The Obama Administration's excuse was lame: the President gives broad oversight to the program, but decisions on specific intelligence-gathering--including targeting heads of state--are made at lower levels. That's absurd: how can the President not be aware of, and make decisions on, spying on fellow heads of state whom he meets with regularly?

All the spying on allies, and would be enemies has been going on forever. Everyone spies on everyone else. As TB said it is nothing new. The NSA spying on our own peoplebegan under Bush and continued under Obama, despite Obama's campaign promises to curtail it.

What Obama has now done is the trap into which all second term presidents seem to fall. He has lied about not knowing about it, which it patently absurd, and this is going to come back to bite him. As is always the case, the lie is worse than the cover-up.

He is further damaged because he also was not truthful about the ACA when he said no one would lose their insurance. He has now "modified" that to say that he really meant was only the bad insurance policies would be cancelled. Also a stupid lie that will cost him, and at this stage he does not need this kind of credibility crisis.

I swear there is something about living inthe White house that makes them all think they can float above the rest of us, and they all develop a feeling their sh*t doesn't stink.

Maybe its time to re-think the old idea of just electing presidents to one six year term and then they go out.

I'm thinking the same thing thanks for the input TB and DT. The white house seems to be fucked up these days. Of course I don't think Obama is to blame completely to think so would be unfair, but I also believe the President should serve as an example to this country both as a citizen and leader. With this NSA scandal, Benghazi, our useless Congress, etc I just feel like I can't trust our government anymore to do the right thing.

The NSA's activities are a creature created by Congress. When these practices were passed through legislation along with the rights restricting measures of the Patriot Act we lived in the cold shadows of 9/11. I always thought it odd that in the aftermath of 9/11 Bush claimed that our enemies despise us because of our freedoms, but the legislative response to the attacks was to expand the government's ability to enter further into our private lives. There was little concern then.

If we had suffered another similar devastating terror attack in the last few years, and it was discovered that the NSA had not been collecting information to the extent authorized by federal law, don't you think that would be a greater scandal than what's taking place today?

I agree, Kly. Ben Franklin got it right: A quote of his that’s enshrined in the Statue of Liberty reads, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

You guys all have good points. Yes we are spying on foreign countries, just as they are spying on us. It will go on forever. Yes some internal watching is necessary as long as there is oversight. We never know how many tragic "Incidents" have or will be prevented.

One of my favorite quotes, and I'm ashamed to say I never realized that it's enshrined in the Statue of Liberty, which is an appropriate home for it.

This has been going on pretty much since we've become a nation. I believe in the 1920s the predecessor of the NSA was spying on all international telegraphs. hell in 2006 at&t got caught funneling every bit of data they had through NSA datacenters and nobody made a peep then.

Major telco's can and will sell your data to the highest bidder, always have and always will, and they will always hide behind the third party doctrine. IE. you sign up for a third party private service, the constitution stops at the door.

True. It lessens your expectation of privacy under the fourth Amendment when you communicate through a third party, including telephone service providers.

What I can't understand is people, who seem incensed that the government or anybody else has no right to see what they are saying in social media.

LOL! yes I laugh to myself every time I see someone on facebook saying that they know their rights and they(facebook) can't infringe on their "free speech"

to the other part about telco's: things don't look like they will be getting any better with the new FCC chair. I mean the guy was literally a lobbyist for comcast and other interests I believe shortly before getting the new position.

It's been going on since the beginning of time. What cracks me up is people getting on their partisan soapboxes over this, like we wouldn't be doing the same thing no matter who was in the White House. People never seem to have a problem with this stuff when "their guy" is in power. Politics as usual .

Spying on enemies is part of history, but spying on our friends allies is not. Germany is saying it is accepting apology. Do they really feel that it is forgiven ? I think it will lead to some mistrust of us from friendly countires. And that is something we do not want. United States has enough people who hate us already.