Snowden says that NSA analysts underlie no oversight. They can search after what they want, without any oversight or assesment. He says that industrial espionage from NSA is a reality.
the US certainly didn't put a man on the moon with a clean room implementation...
They're not using those helicopters to fly Stingrays over Riga. That would burn the whole spying budget in a week. Compare that to the number of PDs in the US that have multiple aircraft that, in fact, are flying Stingrays around collecting our whereabouts.
We are objectively less free, and have vastly less privacy, than many other countries. And for what?