What worries me is that their spying "partnerships" are so broad, that NSA receiving data on Americans from GCHQ, and GCHQ receiving data from NSA, works effectively as themselves doing the spying in their own country.
So then this argument that "we don't spy on our own people", implying that "we have no data on our own people" is potentially misleading to the extreme.
Of course, NSA already spies on Americans, but other countries (Canada, Australia, UK, and others) might not be so "brave", and they could be getting data about every one of their citizens from NSA, which makes it just as bad as themselves doing all the spying. So the "legal boundaries" of these spying agencies are effectively useless.
So then this argument that "we don't spy on our own people", implying that "we have no data on our own people" is potentially misleading to the extreme.
Of course, NSA already spies on Americans, but other countries (Canada, Australia, UK, and others) might not be so "brave", and they could be getting data about every one of their citizens from NSA, which makes it just as bad as themselves doing all the spying. So the "legal boundaries" of these spying agencies are effectively useless.