Intel

On Monday, Joshua asked how much the president may have known about spying on allies.  The New York Times reports:

The nation’s top spymaster said on Tuesday that the White House had long been aware in general terms of the National Security Agency’s overseas eavesdropping, stoutly defending the agency’s intelligence-gathering methods and suggesting possible divisions within the Obama administration.

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the N.S.A. had kept senior officials in the National Security Council informed of surveillance it was conducting in foreign countries. He did not specifically say whether President Obama was told of these spying efforts, but he appeared to challenge assertions in recent days that the White House had been in the dark about some of the agency’s practices.
...

Several current and former American officials said that presidents and their senior national security advisers have long known about which foreign leaders the United States spied on.
“It would be unusual for the White House senior staff not to know the exact source and method of collection,” said Michael Allen, a National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration and a former staff director for the House Intelligence Committee. “That information helps a policy maker assess the reliability of the intelligence.”

Mr. Allen, the author of a book about intelligence reform called “Blinking Red,” said this information often comes to the president during preparation for phone calls or meetings with the foreign leaders.

The intelligence community is pretty complicated




S.H.I.E.L.D. is not on the list but Agent Phil Coulson had an insight during a recent episode: ""It's amazing. Every year this part of our job gets easier. Between Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr, people are surveilling themselves."