That's implicit in "Domestic matters are the FBI's territory. The NSA is tasked with strictly foreign surveillance", but I wanted to be pedantic since the debate on NSA surveillance seems to take surveillance of foreigners as something completely natural and in no way wrong.
But honestly, assuming we get to a point where the US government has a file on every American citizen, does it really matter if the file is with the FBI and not the NSA? Of course the rules and laws covering the two agencies are different, but ultimately, it doesn't seem like the US government is very interested in strictly following the law.
Different agencies follow the law differently. Each agency is composed of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of agents, contractors, and even supporting military staff.
ATF is pretty famous for being extremely fast and loose with the law (see Fast and Furious scandal). FBI on the other hand, is typically considered with higher regard as to legal compliance. But these are different agencies, run differently by different people.
Furthermore, the authority to do actions may all start from the President... but the President divides the authority between the agencies. NSA does not collect from US citizens not only because its against the law, but because its inefficient. The FBI has more files, more manpower, and more specialists on that front. (IE: Fingerprint Database and Genetic Database). However, agencies sometimes collaborate with each other to pass authority between each other, it has become necessary in the era of post-9/11, when the lack of inter-agency collaboration was cited as the #1 reason why 9/11 wasn't prevented.
So now authorities between agencies are passed around: NSA is allowed to collect metadata, because the program is technically FBI. Read the leaked FISA court order carefully. Its an FBI request, the NSA did not technically make the request. The FBI is demanding for data to be handed over to the NSA.
If you are to understand politics, what is _really_ going on in this country, you need to break the habit of thinking of the US Government as one homogenous blob. It is composed of many parts, some of which compete for attention, some of which follow the law better than others.
Lets see how good your "National Government" education was in High School. You know, some of that stuff is important to understand the context of what is going on.
I'm not American, so my education with regards to governments did not include specifics of how the US government works, only a general overview of the governments of most countries.
I'm aware that the US government is not monolithic and homogenous. But it's things like the NSA's programs (such as PRISM) that centralize resources and funding, and turn a heterogeneous government into a coalition defending not always what's best for the nation and the world, or defending the interest of a small group to the detriment of non-adversarial groups with less influence.
Past behavior isn't a guarantee of good future behavior. The NSA always had a fairly good image: secretive but inoffensive, mostly concerned with breaking encrypted communications of interest to national security, and offering good crypto for American citizens and companies. It didn't have the less nice overtones the CIA has, for instance.
Well part of that is how the NSA's mission. NSA is charged with both defense and offense. Defense side has brought us AES, SHA1, etc. etc. Offense side is well... the current controversy.
Anyway, your words are unfortunately generic, and can be applied to any federal government agency. Centralizing resources is almost always going to be either more efficient or more effective. It is important that the NSA is technically a military organization (with tons of civilian supporters). It is run by a 4-Star General, and their primary targets are military enemies. It is imperative for the NSA to be as powerful as possible from a collections standpoint.
The key therefore, is in the laws that restrict the NSA's behavior. The NSA is an outstandingly useful tool to the military... run under the same executive branch that the rest of the Military is run (Department of Defense). Unlike the CIA, which competes with the DoD for budget material, the NSA is most certainly a military tool.
A nation's citizens need to be comfortable with its military. Squadrons of F16s are almost never deployed against citizens, and the massive war machines (Fleets of Carriers, Napalm, etc. etc.) are similarly not to be used against one's own citizens. The NSA is on that list of extremely powerful, but useful tools of the Military's toolbox.
...if you are an American citizen.
That's implicit in "Domestic matters are the FBI's territory. The NSA is tasked with strictly foreign surveillance", but I wanted to be pedantic since the debate on NSA surveillance seems to take surveillance of foreigners as something completely natural and in no way wrong.
But honestly, assuming we get to a point where the US government has a file on every American citizen, does it really matter if the file is with the FBI and not the NSA? Of course the rules and laws covering the two agencies are different, but ultimately, it doesn't seem like the US government is very interested in strictly following the law.