So is it 100% illegal to spy on Americans under any circumstance? FISA etc is literally designed to avoid just that. It has been abused by traitors.
This is what gets me, maybe I am just hopelessly naive, I always thought people working for the security services had an unwavering sense of patriotism, of making the hard choices needed to protect us, the people. I mean, I know that there are bad apples etc, but how in the fuck did it get this bad. I had always been a "rational" conspiracy theorist, but this has been enlightening.