I would +1 this.
The public wanted more protection in a knee-jerk response to 9/11, they got it. And now are complaining. A reason why a true democracy may not be all good in overall objective outlook. The government is slow to some, but more or less it is robust in a solution change.
Pretty much like course correcting an airplane in flight, or even driving. One doesn't need to keep jerking about to keep to a destination, one has to be vigilant in looking ahead, paying attention to all of your visible sides, and maintain course.
The coincidence of Snowden and "The Bourne Legacy" is perhaps, just a coincidence, but pretty much may be of a possible (slight) correlation.
Also, an agency wouldn't care if your pet goldfish cannot eat, or what underwear you wear around the house, those pieces of information is irrelevant to the security and logistics of a country to begin with. The only way one would garner attention, is actively outright doing something destructive to the very system one is living in - again much like a typical immune system response of the very human body itself.
The system is but a tool as well, the people running them is another issue aside, hence the many tiers of checks and balances.
Also...
I started catching up on Cold War history -- the real history -- after I retired. There was an entire watershed of document declassifications beginning with the '92 JFK Records Collection Act, and I began to find -- on my own -- that all the crap I'd been told in grade-school (the Cardinal Spellman "newsletters") -- was crap. So it was about the time of the 2000 election that I began raising the alarm (on my own) about the "National Security State."
I had left college with my degree in the early '70s, with a vague feeling of guilt for having a student deferment. I stood on the sidelines when others hitched to Chicago in '68. I had a copy of Ellsberg's "Pentagon Papers" with me when I relocated to the East, but didn't get around to reading it for years.
The guilt turned to rage. I spent a month -- a whole month, day by day, morning until dusk -- at National Archives College Park and Library of Congress in 2004.
In Truth -- "The Past is Prologue." I understand there is a need for these agencies or what they do. But secrecy degrades the democratic process. You can't have wise democratic decisions without a handful of things: costless information and complete information; voters who think logically; voters who have a balanced sense of their personal interest and the public interest; and a view of the future that incorporates an estimate of future costs, future benefits, and a direction for the country.
Therefore, it is possible for a democratic decision to be -- suboptimal, even "wrong." What does it do for us? At minimum, it legitimates authority over fixed terms, knowing there's another election around the corner.
If you had told me 30 years ago that we'd put an oil executive and a public-nose-picker in the White House, I wouldn'a believed it.
I can split hairs over Ellsberg. He skirted the edge of "treasonous" action, but took the RAND documents to Senator Gravel, and then -- the Times. This wasn't in Snowden's playbook. And it bothers me that Ellsberg supports him.
Ellsberg was a hero. Snowden is a twerp.
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