content: The NSA does very little work like that. Most of their work involves strategic spying, foreign military operations, and connecting the dots on serious threats. Your hypothetical disgruntled insurance salesman would received a few microseconds of scrutiny by automated software and would then be forgotten.  or a stupid joke some guy makes that supposedly breaks the law  The NSA and CIA are not law enforcement. Their job is explicitly about international threats. They can perfectly well attack people who they think have broken no law, and reward those who have broken the law. When they stumble across domestic lawbreaking, if they feel like it, they might forward it to the FBI. You want to complain about busybody cops, complain about the FBI.