> a secret police

The term "secret police refers to intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political opponents" [1]. We have no evidence the NSA is "used to protect the political power of an individual" or even political party. They're an intelligence agency, purely and simply.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police

That spies on members of Congress on the orders of the President... https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30/spying-on-congress-and-i...

One of the few groups that should be spied on

No, their activities should largely be public. The NSA having privlaged information on their actions is dangerous, they have no incentive to share them with the public unless it benefits the NSA.

> No, their activities should largely be public.

I can agree on that

As important as that is, even if they're completely corrupt you still don't want a secret police watching them.

I believe COINTELPRO is now firmly in the realm of "documented fact" rather than "conspiracy theory"? That was the FBI though.

More recently e.g. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/judge-orders-fbi-cia-...

Of course it's documented fact. And the CIA had a comparable program called CHAOS. Moreover, read up on JTRIG's use of sigint to conduct psychological warfare, as revealed by their own documents (GCHQ leak from the Snowden archive)-- smearing people online, destroying reputations. Presumably, they are only conducting such operations on radical terror leaders, but how do we know? And what's to stop them?

Are you implying that people believe the US doesn't have an intelligence community that engages in covert surveillance?

In the past few years, the debate seems to have shifted from "What is appropriate oversight and behavior for intelligence agencies" to "Literally all national-level intelligence operations are a crime which must be stopped". The difference between the US and China/Russia is that in theory we have an intelligence community that is answerable for its actions to an elected civilian government. The extent to which that is true is obviously debatable, but to try to draw some equivalency here is absurd.

It is ironic that the "democracy dies in the dark" people still won't report on this even though it has been common knowledge and public record for over a decade.

Still won't report on what? The Chinese firewall is public knowledge, and Cisco helped build it. China doesn't have a democracy and doesn't pretend to.

NSA spying to an extent is public knowledge, but the submission is full of new information. I'm sure it will be reported by other sources in a few hours.