And Snowden came from the builder side of the house, so all we are seeing in his document release so far is classified capabilities, not the intelligence that they collected, or any plots that they thwarted.

The folks who do know that stuff are still following their own rules, so they can't tell us about them.

So we are all operating from an assymmetry of information. I'm really, really against the capabilities I've learned about so far, but I think it's likely that there are actual results that help NSA leadership rationalize these sorts of programs.