Neither am I cheering for it. Don't put words in my mouth.
I am seriously asking whether being flat-out unconstitutional is worse than building a (legislated and approved) backdoor around the constitution, yes.
I mean, better than both would be to just follow the constitution, but that wasn't the question.
Well, you are asserting a binary choice here which is questionable and implies that unless we grant spooks legal OK for some violations of the constitution they are free to ignore the entire matter. If a government agency is acting in violation of constitution then there are legal and constitutional remedies to make sure the said agencies act according to the law of the land.
Please note that at no point I said that you specifically cheered, so no need to project. It’s a threaded topic.
As you noticed, following constitution is apparently not an option here. Being unconstitutional and ignored, there was at least some hope for improvement, but codification gave us a clear answer that elected representatives are, at best, only selectively interested in supporting constitution.