 Mr. Obama found himself in September standing uncomfortably beside the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who was furious at being named as a target of N.S.A. eavesdropping. Since then, there has been a parade of such protests, from the European Union, Mexico, France, Germany and Spain. Chagrined American officials joke that soon there will be complaints from foreign leaders feeling slighted because the agency had not targeted them. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has repeatedly dismissed such objections as brazen hypocrisy from countries that do their own share of spying. But in a recent interview, he acknowledged that the scale of eavesdropping by the N.S.A., with 35,000 workers and $10.8 billion a year, sets it apart. “There’s no question that from a capability standpoint we probably dwarf everybody on the planet, just about, with perhaps the exception of Russia and China,” he said. Since Edward J. Snowden began releasing the agency’s documents in June, the unrelenting stream of disclosures has opened the most extended debate on the agency’s mission since its creation in 1952. The scrutiny has ignited a crisis of purpose and legitimacy for the N.S.A., the nation’s largest intelligence agency, and the White House has ordered a review of both its domestic and its foreign intelligence collection. While much of the focus has been on whether the agency violates Americans’ privacy, an issue under examination by Congress and two review panels, the anger expressed around the world about American surveillance has prompted far broader questions. If secrecy can no longer be taken for granted, when does the political risk of eavesdropping overseas outweigh its intelligence benefits? Should foreign citizens, many of whom now rely on American companies for email and Internet services, have any privacy protections from the N.S.A.? Will the American Internet giants’ collaboration with the agency, voluntary or otherwise, damage them in international markets? And are the agency’s clandestine efforts to weaken encryption making the Internet less secure for everyone? Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian and author of a 2009 book on the N.S.A., said there is no precedent for the hostile questions coming at the agency from all directions. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “From N.S.A.’s point of view, it’s a disaster,” Mr. Aid said. “Every new disclosure reinforces the notion that the agency needs to be reined in. There are political consequences, and there will be operational consequences.” 
 
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 A review of classified agency documents obtained by Mr. Snowden and shared with The New York Times by The Guardian, offers a rich sampling of the agency’s global operations and culture. (At the agency’s request, The Times is withholding some details that officials said could compromise intelligence operations.) The N.S.A. seems to be listening everywhere in the world, gathering every stray electron that might add, however minutely, to the United States government’s knowledge of the world. To some Americans, that may be a comfort. To others, and to people overseas, that may suggest an agency out of control. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 This huge investment in collection is driven by pressure from the agency’s “customers,” in government jargon, not only at the White House, Pentagon, F.B.I. But it was emblematic of an agency that for decades has operated on the principle that any eavesdropping that can be done on a foreign target of any conceivable interest — now or in the future — should be done.
– A lengthy report in the New York Times, based on thousands of documents shared by the Guardian via Edward Snowden, offers an in-depth look at an agency that can "seem omniscient," with eyes everywhere tracking even the smallest matters. The material obtained—whether years of stored text messages, "gigabytes of credit card purchases," or eavesdropped conversations—can be of great value: Scott Shane writes about operations that stopped a terrorist plot against a Swedish illustrator, helped Kennedy International Airport battle Chinese human smugglers, and gave the Colombian Army details of FARC rebel plans. But plenty of collected data is never looked at, despite the effort to obtain it. And some material seems hardly useful; the paper cites the agency's successful grab at UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon's talking points for a meeting with President Obama. Meanwhile, despite the NSA's incredible reach in Afghanistan, it hasn't offered a path to "clear-cut strategic success" in the country, the Times notes. The paper's investigation, while raising a range of key questions, presents a wealth of details on the NSA's functioning; the agency hopes to "utterly master" foreign intelligence and gives great value to "the moral high ground." Click for the full piece.