Your USB cable, the spy: Inside the NSA’s catalog of surveillance magic

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams#X-Ger.C3.A...

"Jones had already concluded the Germans used code names which were too descriptive. He asked a specialist in the German language and literature at Bletchley Park about the word Wotan. The specialist realised Wotan referred to Wōden and might therefore be a single beam navigation system."

Would you object to the NSA or CIA planting bugs that record audio or video on targets of interest outside of the United States? Does that exceed their constitutional grounds? How about if they supplied these to law enforcement agencies which had valid search warrants?

I have plenty of concerns about the constitutionality of certain NSA programs (such as collecting metadata on everyone, regardless of prior suspicion or search warrant), and some of the techniques they use (tapping all of Google's fiber traffic between data centers, putting backdoors in international standards), and I find these revelations technically fascinating, but I don't find any fundamental constitutional issue with them using clever, advanced technology for spying on valid targets.

Mass surveillance, such as recording and correlating cell phone location data or searching all emails, is immoral and unconstitutional, and it's good that the extent of it was revealed.

Doctored USB cables do not enable mass surveillance since they have to be physically delivered to specific subjects. Assuming they're delivered based on some sort of probable cause, they are a legitimate law enforcement technique.

Revealing details of legitimate practices does no good. To the extent that revealing them encourages the NSA to resort to less legitimate practices, it's harmful.