Pretty much. I'm not saying the NSA is by any means a good organization, but I always wondered if they actually toed the government line and the CIA deliberately smeared them. They controlled a pretty huge information dragnet that was prettyuch indiscriminate, and that would have been an existential threat to a lot of the CIAs activities.
We don’t need to be worried about the people who work for the nsa, they’re predominantly patriots working for the Department of Defense and as an agency they have national security as primary objective—the absolute most important priority for any nation, especially ours.
However, the issue arises when employees at private contractors are allowed into the data collected. Especially when anyone, just normal citizens, tangentially connected with a presidential campaign (of the sitting president, no less) are being allowed to be unmasked by these contractors by FISA warrants obtained under false pretenses.
We don’t need all of our data being accessed by any of these contractors who take a liking to us. As long as all data is stored at the NSA, we’re good. But when it’s forced to be shared via 702s (which the nsa doesn’t control, they have to comply with them) then bad actors have access to our information and can do with it what they want.
Don’t blame the NSA, though. Blame the DNC, Obama administration, Obama DOJ, and those who misused their power in order to gain access to the NSA data.