I find myself underwhelmed by this particular instance of inefficient reportage by the media.

Snowden, to all appearances, wants to blow the whistle on the NSA. It's illegal, but that is sometimes true in whistleblowing instances. He chose to run rather than to face the music domestically. Cannot find myself lauding him for that. He will now live in exile. His choice.

The whole thing boils down to freedom versus security. At what point is security too costly in terms of the loss of freedom. In this electronic age, I am not sure that we're all familiar enough with the technology to really grasp what was going on.

Hoover having "skeleton files" on movers and shakers in DC makes sense. We can all understand it. A computer program that sucks up all of our cell phone calls and does word searches etc. but may or may not be able to access a specific call without direct intervention is a little more nebulous.

Understandable would be the NSA is copying Jane's sexting photos to Joe and pinning them up on the wall in the break-room. That is the kind of thing that people understand.

The rest? People's eyes glaze over except for a few percentage points of the savvier younglings who start screaming Big Brother. Since that sub-group is the same subgroup that thought Napster's piracy was cool, they don't necessarily convince a lot of others.