Quote:
Originally Posted by Culture20
The NSA is military, and expressly prohibited from acting as law enforcement in any capacity.
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Correct, and the CIA acts on foreign soil. If they uncover evidence of spying on U.S. soil, or in a U.S. territory, they have the legal requirement to notify the FBI.
The FBI controls all counter-intelligence operations in places under U.S. jurisdiction, and (as you noted) agents do exercise law-enforcement authority.
(Interestingly, they exercise law-enforcement authority when U.S.-flagged ships and boats experience crime on the high seas, while the U.S. Coast Guard takes care of crimes in U.S. coasts waters. They just get help from the U.S. Navy, sometimes, if Congress okays it.)
If someone with the CIA or NSA tries to target a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, somebody with the agencies could wind up in jail. Congress gets pretty uptight about that sort of thing, and the courts have no sense of humor about it,
at all.