I have to admit, my primary concern through all of this has not been so much the government spying, but rather regulated, and the lack thereof. The very story of Snowden leaking should speak volumes: "So a random contractor can just make off with tons of government information?" And given the content of some of those files, particularly the actual spying records, a lot of the personnel-based inethical things can go on. The WoW thing was another nail, but there have been many others: The whole Merkel incident, the constant drum beat of news hinting at not only how much info was being taken, but how little was used or even analyzed; taken solely because they can and why not. The NY times ran an article about the culture of office there, specifically the drive to "get everything that could be useful", without consideration of consequence or even actual usefulness: Obama having Ban-Ki Moon's talking points before he actually spoke with him is only barely useful, and that only hints at even more info of an even more useless level collected simply because it is tangently related to politics.
It points basically to an organization uncoordinated, one where useful info can fall down the cracks as a deluge of privacy invading yet useless info streams in. They're just doing whatever in there, playing spy with their toys. They need to go in there, and reform from the bottom up. I know many of us would prefer to simply rage at the NSA and demand that they stop doing things; but it won't happen, and it makes the agency defensive and brings out defenders. No one benefits from the NSA being run poorly, and that is what is happening.