If the NSA could do anything it wanted, what would it do?

Surveillance
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For a moment, let's put aside the law. No FISA, no court, no inspector general, no nothing. If the law did not exist, what constraints, if any, would exist on the NSA leviathan?

I was thinking about this while I listened to Gen. Keith Alexander's presentation to Black Hatters. Because the debate has become so polarized, it seems as if you must choose to believe that laws provided either sufficient protection or none at all. I take a middle view, which doesn't make me very bookable on cable news. But as an exercise in thought, I wondered what it would mean if the U.S. government did not impose any legal constraints whatsoever on the NSA. At this extreme, how much information would the NSA be able to collect, what could they do with it, and what WOULD they with it?

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.