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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

According to the article, they're not feeling down because they're widely hated by the populace (well, technically, it's mentioned in the last paragraph).

They're sad because the president hasn't personally visited their building to give them a pep talk.

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Exactly what I was about to comment. They are not really concerned about democracy, they think they know better than the public and it's fine as long as the president supports them. Of course, that's exactly how every authoritarian government works...

Are they really widely hated by the populace, or are they just widely hated on small communities like HN?

After talking with my very conservative family in the mid-west. Yes. They are hated.

This is more than a loaded question. HN has its own views, but they also have an information set perhaps not widely available. The better framing is that, given a(n equal) technical understanding of what NSA is doing, where would the majority stand? I don't think they would stand with the government's over-reach. The red-states don't really go for that, and the blue states don't really go for it either: it's anti-liberal in a different sense. What the NSA is really doing here is protecting the 1%, in the sense that those in power are merely seeking to stay in power at all costs. Ideology, constitution, and every other consideration be damned.

I suppose they have already collected enough data to make the right judgement about how many people hate them.

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