I am curious: Suppose this is true and NSA analysts have the technical capability to access enormous amount of information with no authorization. But if they do do that, agains the law and the rules and their actions are recorded in the system, they could face penalties no? I mean I could kill someone with a hammer technically, that doesn't make hammer bad per se, does it ?
It says can be audited. I suspect the number of times that has been done is vanishingly small, perhaps only on Snowden, after his revelations :) It smells to me like plausible deniability. Claim you have set up a system where things can be audited, don't ever answer how frequently it is done or what the penalty is for abuse of the system. Top secret and all. This kind of system really should freak people out. I imagine it would be a great blackmail info system if people start speaking against the govt or "causing problems". I can imagine public figures don't want to be publicly shamed for their online activities, gambling, porn, affairs, etc...
