For a different perspective on what NSA statistics reveal, read this commentary by Joshua Frost:
The math of the NSA’s violations bears some relevance. The NSA’s compliance director told reporters that it performs “around 20 million” queries per month — or 240,000,000 per year. Assuming they are accurately self-reporting (and if we’re arguing about their internal audit, then we’re implicitly adopting that assumption), that means the audit determined about 0.001156666667 percent of the queries the NSA performs each year are violating laws or regulations.
Digging into the data further, a substantial number of improper collection incidents — around 68 percent — are “roamers,” meaning they were foreigners who were legally surveilled outside the U.S. but happened to travel here, which made continued surveillance illegal.
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