It's not the mathematics or exponential functions or Moore's law. Bertie had a few things to say about mathematics... http://www.brainyquo...randru402437.html ;-)
It's not the server and sensor technology.
It's not the size of the budget.
It's not the press coverage that resulted from Snowden's leaks.
It's not the organizations that are on one side or another in making their arguments.
What really matters in this NSA stuff is the people. The people working there, the people doing oversight, and the people requesting information from them, the people writing the rules.
You want the best people you can get working there in the trenches, and the best managers you can get directing them and looking over their shoulders. You want the best people you can get on the courts deciding sensible solutions when arguments are made about the law. And you want the best people you can get writing the laws in the first place.
"But! But! People are flawed! People can't be trusted! You should be outraged!!!111"
Sorry. Outrage and emotional thinking leads to things like the Patriot Act. It leads to bad laws and bad long-term solutions. It distracts people from important issues.
Let's look over the report that was released today and see if changes they suggest make sense. Let's see if the proposed changes change the structure of the NSA in a way that eliminates the possibility of "snooping" on Americans, or whether there are instead modest tweaks or changes in process. I expect modest changes, and I expect Obama will have sensible things to say about them in January when he announces what changes he will make and propose to Congress.
It gets tiring, to me anyway, to have so many issues apparently driven by outrage. I can only cope with so many demands that I be outraged per month. We point and laugh at people who get outraged about Obama's birth certificate or invasion by illegal aliens or Benghazi or Healthcare.gov or Kony 2012 or ... It seems to me that some who don't get worked about those things but get riled up about the NSA are suffering from (or perhaps blessed by) the same affliction.
(I considered posting something about Snowden's and Greenwald's various posts on various issues over the years to further illustrate the point, but this is long enough as it is...)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.