Warantless Searches

As has been posted many times on these pages, it tends to confirm that quite apart from the competitive advantage US corporations are gaining from spying on competitors, the real target of the NSA, are individual Americans. Although we rarely hear about it on these shores (for obvious reasons) there is a real growing intolerance of American corporatism, financial theft, police militarism etc. Add to these revelations the, apparently liberal, ideology of clearing out the jails and perhaps you will be drawn to the notion that maybe the jails are being emptied for those identified by the NSA as US dissidents
If these are warrantless searches, then there is no paper trail and documentation is solely in the hands of our trustworthy NSA. To conduct these backdoor surveillances, the NSA recruits from hacker conventions to hire those talented enough to find ways into your computer without leaving a trace. This whole thing has been a good illustration of why we should make sure there is effective oversight of intelligence agencies. If intelligence agencies deny doing things that the wider world knows they are doing and then only admits it when they are repeatedly asked "how come there's proof you did it then?" then surely this would suggest there needs to be oversight to make sure they follow the current laws.
If they are breaking laws designed to protect the privacy of civilians then we are veering away from living in democractic societies because our authorities are effectively making their own laws which we have no say in.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nsa-surveillance-loophole-americans-data