"If this is true, this is incredibly bad, and the CIA should be discredited.

What do you mean by "discredited"? If anything this gives a ton of credibility to CIA's rumored capability. Hell, it gives CIA so much credibility now that they can practically make up stuff and people will believe it by saying "oh they can bug everything, of course they found out about it".

It tells us what they can do but it certainly doesnt incentivize trust.

Public trust is a pretty low tier item on the list of priorities for global intelligence agencies. They exist to do their job and be effective at furthering our own national interest while screwing over enemies.

Public trust is a PR problem and there are other people that manage it.

Why is it bad? Does anyone expect spies not to have spy tools? Espionage is their job, after all.

OK fine. But let's stop pretending.

The CIA has access to the search history and phone call log of everything single American, and is blatantly breaking the constitution, and every single one of them should be arrested and sent to jail, for breaking the US constitution.

It is "their job", but it is also illegal and they should be sent to jail for treason.

You are correct, though, that it is completely expected that they have spy tools that blatantly break our constitutional rights.

The CIA is specifically constructed to operate in other countries. I see no reason to think that they are "blatantly breaking the constitution."

There are other agencies like the NSA that are spying on Americans, but I've seen no evidence that the CIA is doing this.

It is the CIA's job to spy on other countries and that doesn't violate the constitution. Nothing in the leak so far says that the CIA is spying on Americans.

Well the CIA can legally spy on Americans "incidentally" when they communicate with foreigners. See Flynn calls with Kislyak for example.

Maybe GP is starting to finally see the CIA how the rest of the world has seen them for say, oh the last 60 years or so.

Yeah, not being American I always thought the USA was quite proud of its spy service, just the Russians are sort of proud of the KGB, the british are proud of MI6 and so on. Large countries have espionage agencies, and every government since ancient history has used spies.

Put it this way, I have a Samsung TV and plan to do absolutely nothing about it. If I want something to be really private i discuss it outdoors or write it down by hand on paper. I'm kind of baffled about eh public and the media's inability to distinguish between the ability to carry out espionage and the targets against which it is deployed.

> really private

Just be sure not to put the TV in your bedroom.

Anyone spying on my sex life is welcome to whatever insights they can derive from studying my moves :)

You mean the bedroom where you charge your phone?

Exactly. Escaping that vecomes really difficult.

No matter what your opinion on the CIA, it's bad. If for no other reason than that it was a huge counter-intelligence failure.