It's also hard to make the case that it isn't, ultimately, what the people want, by "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" principle.

It's been nearly twenty years. If Americans were deeply, deeply bothered by the government spying on them, they'd have burned down this government by now. At most charitable, this speaks to a deep ignorance or apathy in the American electorate and American citizenship. Or a general anxiety about what "the other people" are doing that exceeds their anxiety about what the government can do with panopticon surveillance.

I think, in general, hackers vastly overestimate the average human concern or sensitivity to this kind of thing.