I don't know about you guys, but more and more I'm reminded of that old Queensryche lyric:
Let's tip the power balance and tear down their crown. Educate the masses, We'll burn the White House down. Speak to me the pain you feel.
Have you considered the possibility that the people in a position to decide whether or not he has a job have more relevant information than you do, and are better qualified to evaluate it, and so that when they come to a different conclusion than you it could be that you are the one who is wrong?
A lot of smart people inexplicably overlook this possibility.
Sure, in some hypothetical alternate universe ,these guys might be "in the right", but we don't live in a hypothetical, alternate universe as far as I can tell.
I'll also offer this up: If you or I were called to testify before a Congressional committee and we perjured ourselves with blatant lies, then later admitted it, don't you think there would be some repercussions?
Rolling over and saying "our leaders have all the info so they know best!" as your rights are violated hasn't exactly been a winning strategy throughout history.
What I actually said was that someone with more information might be better able to evaluate a situation and come to the right conclusion, and we should take this into account when evaluating the actions of those who have more information.
This should be uncontroversial, unless one wishes to argue that less information puts one in a better position to make correct decisions.
I did and came out with the conclusion that even entertaining this possibility is extremely naive.
Not to mention terribly undemocratic.
This means that decisions have to be clearly explained to the voting public by the leading experts in a field or the public's representatives, and then the decision of that public accepted, even if it is distasteful to the experts/representatives. Of course sometimes on unimportant topics the representatives will shortcut this process and just take decisions themselves. On important topics though they have to go to the nation and demonstrate their views by explaining what they plan to do and have done.
The society created by your proposal is an oligarchy, not a representative democracy.
How would you suggest that decisions be made on questions where the necessary data to make an informed decision must be kept secret?
An example would be a country deciding between different weapons systems proposals for its military. An informed decision required detailed knowledge of the capabilities of the different systems, but there is no way to get that information to the voters without also getting it to every other military around the world, which would greatly aid them in producing countermeasures to the new weapons.
While it limits the effectiveness of our government, informed representative democracy is the least bad system we've found for also limiting its abuses. Our representatives should be informed of everything the government does, because that limits the power of the government. I'd go further and say that on important questions, the public has a right to know as well. If a few individuals or organisations decide what is secret, they can expand the zone of secrecy until everything is secret, and refuse to tell the public why it is secret because, well that's a secret too. That situation has come to pass with programs like Tempora in the UK or PRISM in the US.
Of course the military would like things to remain classified indefinitely, and of course their effective power is limited by exposing information. The most effective military would be one about which absolutely nothing was known, with all weapons secret, and one with absolute power over the civilian population, but we don't accept that in peacetime or for the long term because it would effectively be tyranny. So we limit military power, and military secrecy, and sometimes important weapons (like nuclear missiles) will be made public knowledge, because if they were not too much power would be concentrated in the hands of too few, and we would no longer have anything approaching an informed public.
Taking nuclear weapons as an example, the public needs to know the cost, how many the government makes, the conditions in which they'll be used, and the cost in human lives if they are used. They don't need to know how to make or deploy one. I believe that's an acceptable trade-off. I don't accept that there are important questions where the necessary data must be kept secret even from the people's representatives.
Going back to the original question - total take surveillance by the NSA. The most effective spy organisation would be able to tap every connection, peruse any and all records instantly, censor and control the press, regularly feed disinformation to the public, and control politicians and what they say. Clearly most people in the world think that's unacceptable, because it conflicts with other values which we hold to be more important (privacy, freedom of speech, democratic decision making) - widespread surveillance or widespread secrecy are inimical to democracy, and allowing secret activities to be managed by anyone else than the people, or their direct representatives, allows a dangerous usurpation of power.
I suggest not taking such decisions in the first place. This is a false dillema.
In a true democracy, very little "must be kept secret".
Let's say that we believe that it was absolute necessary for the various services "to monitor everyone's mails".
While the content of the emails they monitor could have been kept secret (for operational reasons), the decision, reasoning and procedure of monitoring them should have been public knowledge and voted explicitly.
It's undemocratic to explain the behavior of officials behind closed doors with "they could know better".
It's not their job to do anything by themselves because they "know better".
Their job is to inform the public for what they do, so it can make an informed decision (based on it's interests).