It turns out that the National Security Agency's wide-ranging surveillance programs could have been much worse if other federal agencies had had their way. The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt report that the NSA has turned away the majority of requests for information sharing from federal law enforcement agencies on the grounds that the requests have too little to do with national security and could be misused in ways that violate citizens' privacy.



Several former US intelligence officials told the Times that the NSA's data collection has resulted in "turf battles" with other agencies who have complained of a lack of access to the NSA's tools. Former White House and Office of the Director of National Security official Timothy H. Edgar said that such complaints about the NSA were common—“They collect all this information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to what they want," he told Times reporters."The other agencies feel they should be bigger players. They view the NSA—incorrectly, I think—as this big pot of data that they could go get if they were just able to pry it out of them.”

While other agencies within the Intelligence Community have "quick access to NSA tools and data" when it comes to national security issues, Lichtblau and Schmidt reported, the NSA is tighter with information where the foreign intelligence aspects of an operation are less clear. And while a spokesperson from the Drug Enforcement Agency said on the record that the DEA was happy with the level of cooperation it got from the NSA, the reporters wrote that off-the-record conversations with DEA officials were less glowing, saying they felt "shut out" by the NSA and FBI. On the other side, NSA and FBI officials said privately that they felt other agencies often exaggerated the national security angle of their requests in order to get better access to data.