A lot of the comments here remind me of the debate about student loan forgiveness. Some say, "Why should they have their loan forgiven when I had to pay mine?!"
I know, these are two completely different topics that can't be compared. I just feel a lot of people here think "Why should they get free food if I have to pay for it?".
Exactly. Their personal anecdote about something that happened years ago doesn't reflect the reality that many Walmart and McDonalds employees rely on government assistance to survive.
The NSA has been caught lying before (see: the Snowden leaks) so I wouldn't trust them to be forthcoming about their industrial espionage, if they are engaging in it. Of course they'd deny it.
I wouldn't say they are doing a bad job spying on people for that reason; I think it's more likely that the reason they are spying is not to help children/people but rather to strengthen their control over the people. Knowledge is power and they want to be more powerful than everyone else. I've always assumed that the spying wasn't altruistic but more for selfish reasons.