'Let Me Stress How Shocking These NSA Revelations Are': A View From Inside the Defense World - James Fallows - The Atlantic: But the thing about the NSA revelations is that this isn't exceptional illegality. It is routine, somehow justified by legal opinions written by John Yoo-style hacks.
And worse, it is so routine that 29 y/o contractors have access to it.
The issue isn't so much that we've expanded the national security in response to perceived threats, but rather than doing so has become so unexceptional that it is routine, widely known, and the information widely (though not publicly) available.
At the risk of Godwining the email, this is the essence of the "banality of evil" in the precise Arendtian sense of the term.