Yap. This is exciting. Just like one bad thing about Snowden (and Binney) was that if public was not outraged enough, it would actually make things worse. As those who administer these programs will just get bolder and expand them. It it a little too early to decide if this effect it taking place.

But one good thing is (and I've said this before in relation to the whistleblowers) is that it will encourage more whistleblowers.

One of the apparent requirements for working at many of these 3 letter agencies is patriotism. If you show patriotism, you are a good candidate. They will spend money training you technical things, but they can't train you to be a patriot and love your country. The "problem" with such patriots is that they actually take to heart things like "Constitution", "Privacy", "Freedom" and so on. The hope of the agency is that with enough brainwashing and threats of loss of job, imprisonment, etc., these values would move to the background.

The "pragmatics" on top understand that those concepts are just there for propaganda. It is the sys admins and other mid-level analysts that might actually believe, and might just pull a Snowden so to speak once in a while.

NSA understood this and immediately went into self-preservation mode. They probably never even thought along the lines of "OMG we have let the public down, we have screwed up, etc etc.", rather they saw it as, we are not threatening and controlling our employees enough. So instead of spying less on our own citizens, we should institute "no-lone-zones" (like nuclear silos have), so you are together with an accountabil-a-buddy who is supposed to snitch on you if you do something silly.