This spying was under secret for four years, only known by Congress, the Executive Branch, and the New York Times. According to the NSA, the President was breaking the nation's laws, and even though he knew these laws existed, he peacefully accepted his actions during the past four years after the publication. The President of the United States has been breaking the law for four years, and accepted that was breaking it, and continue on doing it without any interference of any other branch. How can it be possible? But as James Madison says "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.".
Three issues are emerging from this unconstitutional abuse of power: an abuse in American's privacy, an inequality on how check and balances are distributed, how the rule of law is broken meaning that the Constitution is not being followed either, and how the abuse of power by a President can ruin years of progress in a country's democracy. There is a clear inequality on checks and balances between the Executive branch, Congress and the Supreme Court. Al Gore, in the book Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Political Issues, expresses that Congress didn't authorized the addition of the Use of Military Force, and that the administration did looked for other routes to have the correct wording inserted, but Congress didn't agreed either. Bush didn't give importance to their decision and assumed power. In third world countries, this is usually normal to hear it happens. Headers in different newspapers are titled "President Uses Congress' budget for his nephew's political campaign", it is still unacceptable, and that is why they never develop, but that will be forgotten the next day. In this case, we are talking about one of the superpowers of the world, the biggest government with a spotlight on it, where the President of the United States is the most famous person around the world, even considered a celebrity in some places.