It is pretty hard to be less popular than Congress these days… But the NSA is trying real hard to achieve that honor.

Case in point:

When Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont sent a letter to the NSA last Friday asking whether the agency spies on members of Congress, the agency’s response was less than comforting.

The agency assured Senator Sanders that “Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.” 

Given revelations over the past year concerning the scope of the NSA’s dragnet surveillance and data collection practices, we at USDemocrazy would guess those “protections” don’t amount to much.

Check out Conor Friedersdorf’s piece in The Atlantic explaining just how disturbing this is.

Setting aside the danger of an executive agency abusing the power to spy on members of the legislature, this development just reminds us how expansive—and seemingly unchecked—the NSA’s powers have become.

Will Congress eventually reign in the NSA? Or is the surveillance state becoming too powerful to control?