> It could be that with their security clearances, they know things about threats that make their decision to work for the NSA a moral imperative.
This I very much doubt.The builders would have security clearances, because what they're building is classified. But builders would not need and would not have access to intelligence; they aren't analysts or policy makers. They probably have barely more information on intelligence than you or I, and only in the form of more solid rumors than we have access to.
And Snowden came from the builder side of the house, so all we are seeing in his document release so far is classified capabilities, not the intelligence that they collected, or any plots that they thwarted.
The folks who do know that stuff are still following their own rules, so they can't tell us about them.
So we are all operating from an assymmetry of information. I'm really, really against the capabilities I've learned about so far, but I think it's likely that there are actual results that help NSA leadership rationalize these sorts of programs.
This I very much doubt.The builders would have security clearances, because what they're building is classified. But builders would not need and would not have access to intelligence; they aren't analysts or policy makers. They probably have barely more information on intelligence than you or I, and only in the form of more solid rumors than we have access to.