

| Sat Jul. 5, 2014 11:45 PM EDT


So was all of this worth it? The Post's review illustrates just how hard it is to make that judgment:





The whole story is worth a read in order to get a more detailed description of what these intercepts looked like and who they ended up targeting. In some ways, the Snowden intercepts show that the NSA is fairly fastidious about minimizing data on US persons. In other ways, however, the NSA plainly stretches to the limit—and probably beyond—the rules for defining who is and isn't a US person. Click the link for more.

1Naturally, the NSA has an explanation:





Front page image: Edward Snowden