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It's technically very easy, but very difficult practically. You can push a button and monitor someone, yes. Then, when it comes time to audit things, a week later, you need now justify that. Analysts don't decide who to monitor, they are told. So when an analyst that just decided to monitor someone is found to have been not given direction to do so is found out, it's very bad.
Believe me or not. It changes nothing.
If it really is this cut and dry why wouldn't the system have safeguards in place so that you can only monitor approved parties? The supervisor could do this as they "tell" their subordinate who to monitor. They could authorize access to monitor a specific individual or groups of them. If the subordinate needed to broaden the scope they could put in a request for additional parties to be authorized to be investigated with some kind of method to justify probably cause, or a link to the original party (why they should be investigated). This would prevent somebody from just tapping in any name they want and going after them. It would also slow down or stop over broad or unreasonable snooping unless it had a decent justification.
If this is all so sensitive and high level stuff it isn't rocket science to do it in a matter that upholds high standards. I don't think that is the case at all. I think they're a bunch of cowboys that don't give a **** and just do whatever they please without sufficient oversight.