Nevertheless, it is the very idea that you can strike a "balance" between privacy and law, that allows for the existence of the Utah data center. The existence of this architecture of surveillance poses a real existential threat to your privacy. It's a technological atomic bomb in the making. The more powerful the center becomes, the more likely it is to attract the unscrupulous.
The "bizarre insistence" is not on purity of political issues, but it's on the purity of information security. The surveillance state is a rather binary thing... the architecture exists, or it doesn't. No amount of internal audits can make it any safer.
Also, you should hear Russ Tice's (first NSA whistleblower) recent interview with the boiling frog where he claims to believe that politicians are being blackmailed after being spied on.
The "bizarre insistence" is not on purity of political issues, but it's on the purity of information security. The surveillance state is a rather binary thing... the architecture exists, or it doesn't. No amount of internal audits can make it any safer.
Also, you should hear Russ Tice's (first NSA whistleblower) recent interview with the boiling frog where he claims to believe that politicians are being blackmailed after being spied on.