You conveniently left out Iceland, from the very same sentence that is the source of what you listed. As far as I know, Iceland is innocent of terrorism accusations from the US. (OK, benefit of the doubt: maybe The Intercept added Iceland to the article later, or you genuinely didn't see it.)

Anyway, you really think the "bad countries" you named from a 5-year-old document are an exhaustive list of what they've got today? You think the agencies won't scoop up any other countries' keys, including the United States', just in case their metadata graphs later suggest sleeper agents in "the good countries"?

I'm too ticked to make a good argument about morality or lack thereof right now, so I'll just leave it here. They hacked and surveilled non-terrorists to get the keys, and got the keys of at least one "non-terrorist country" (Iceland), so no, I don't find your argument convincing, and I think the parent post's point stands.

From the Intercept article its not clear why this type of data was collected from an Icelandic carrier. The linked graph appears to show 100 IMSI's from Iceland, as opposed to 100,000 from Somalia* and tens of thousands from Afghanistan. It's possible that the Iceland data was acquired incidentally because it happened to come from the same sources that were sending data on more interesting countries. It's possible that there's something of value to be learned in Iceland. I don't know. The Intercept gives us very little context as to the actual products that the intelligence agencies produce. [Edit: Page 11 of this document indicates that the acquisition of keys from Iceland and Tajikistan was unexpected and that those countries were not targeted: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/pcs-h...]

I don't dispute the fact that the US government has intelligence-gathering priorities that don't involve terrorism. I would argue that at least one reason terrorism is discussed is that there are diplomatic consequences to saying one spies on foreign governments. I also agree with the more cynical view, that terrorism is cited as a rationale because terrorism is scary and something opposed by everyone the US is trying to convince.

I believe very strongly that the world would be a lot safer if the US government knew certain things like the intentions of the Russian leadership and the capabilities of the Russian armed forces. Or the state of the Iranian nuclear program and that country's negotiating position. Or what exactly is happening on the ground in the midst of all the chaos in Libya or Syria or Yemen.

The answers to these questions will determine the fate of entire regions of the world.

*A subsequent document puts a later figure for Somalia at 300,000.

In the interest of the fuller picture, thanks for noting that Iceland and Tajikistan were incidental. I don't know that we have a definitive answer from these docs on whether those keys were even saved. Even if not, it's unsettling that an "automated process" turns up keys "not on the list of interest." The article even says the "system failed to produce results against Pakistani networks, denoted as “priority targets” in the document."

I don't know how far I'd be willing to go to effect a hypothetical, unknown increase in safety and control. I do know that the US government and its allies are destroying the reputations of innocent companies, the peace of mind of hundreds of Gemalto/network employees who will now be wondering if they were personally hacked and to what extent, and the human rights of privacy of hundreds of thousands of people who use SIM cards. Is it worth it? I guess we'll never know, and I don't think the spies can truly say either.

Maybe some of that falls on leakers' shoulders too, but in any case it's not very confidence-inspiring that lowly people like Manning and Snowden were able to steal what they did.