This reads very strangely, like maybe the author didn't really understand the issues, or maybe that many, many editors/censors had their hands on it.<p><i>Bulk data collection was seen by the agencies as essential to uncover networks and identify and pursue targets on whom they could then focus. It was not the same as so-called mass surveillance, though without proper oversight it could be misused for that purpose.</i> W. T. F.? "Mass surveillance" and "bulk data collection" are synonyms in this universe. Only a lawyer could slice those two phrases thin enough to make them mean different things. The article is full of contemptible double-talk like that.<p><i>Now [Intelligence Agencies] had to make a massive effort to try to identity potential targets who were often hiding in plain sight among the rest of the population.</i><p>Really? Really? Which US residents/visitors/vacationers, other than the original 20 9/11 conspirators are or were "hiding in plain sight"? All those lamers that the US FBI has almost-but-not-quite entrapped into heinous terrorism charges? Najibullah Zazi, who was so incompetent that they found him posting about how to turn beauty supplies into bombs after he miserably failed to do so?<p>The whole thing reeks of some kind of elitism that is so rarefied, so high handed, that I can't even really believe someone would be able to write it down in 2015, much less actually believe it.<p>Crap, crap, and more crap.