>Many claim the NSA is just another agency, and thus will share the same faults found in agencies like the IRS, which recently targeted people based on their political beliefs. This is a terribly wrong comparison. The IRS hires people with high-school diplomas, the NSA hires Ph.D.s with military service. If anybody at the NSA used their position to further their political party, their fellow employees would be the first to point that out, and stop them.

1. A PhD doesn't imply lack of political prejudice. Military service doesn't imply lack of political prejudice. High school as highest completed education doesn't imply existence of political prejudice. This is an extremely ill-conceived argument and really only reveals the author's own elitism.

2. The whistleblower in this case is a past employee of the CIA and current (well, I guess not anymore) contractor for the NSA. He did not even complete high school. The characterization of the NSA only hiring "PhDs with military service" is objectively wrong.

>The rank and file of the NSA is not your enemy. They carry out the mission that politicians give them, and do not cross the line with an almost religious fervor. It’s the politicians who have moved that line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials

This makes me think of the movie Cube. Wrong or evil? It's irrelevant - the outcomes are perverse.

    Ph.Ds with military service?

I can only imagine that that is a very very short list of people. Everyone I've met with a Ph.D. is as far from the mentality of the military people I've met and vice versa.