No Authorization

The FCC didn't even bother to open an investigation on NSA spying before closing it:

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will not pursue complaints about a spy agency's access to millions of telephone records because it cannot obtain classified material, the FCC's chairman said in a letter released on Tuesday.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, had asked communications regulators to investigate a newspaper report that AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications and BellSouth Corp. gave access to and turned over call records to help the National Security Agency fight terrorists.

"The classified nature of the NSA's activities makes us unable to investigate the alleged violations," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in the May 22 letter to Markey.

So let's recap: the executive branch can break the law. Oversight agencies cannot investigate because they don't have authorization. The Congress refuses to investigate because they don't want to, and they don't have authorization. The courts have to wait for somebody to file a case, and nobody can file a case because doing so would reveal state secrets and the plaintiffs don't have authorization. The press could write a story, but they could be thrown in jail because they don't have authorization.

How is this any different from a dictatorship?