In politics, it's totally normal to say to your election team "get me all the dirt on my opponent you can possibly find" We already know they go to the lengths of interviewing childhood neighbors and classmates, releasing opponents divorce records, releasing opponents tax records, private details about sex lives and bad habits from x-wifes. And you really think that when it comes to the privacy of people concerning the information available at the click of a button over at the NSA is respected? That the people who's lives are constantly mired in winning at all costs are going to say "oh, well, we're not supposed to do that".
But we already know they do things they aren't supposed to do all the time. All that matters is if they get caught or not.