Oddly enough, 6 out of circa 30 people answering this thread are americans, which are actually the only ones entitled to answer, as the NSA/CSS is an US organization. As much as we, europeans, can sympathize and empathize with what americans are going through -- or might eventually go through -- the fact is that our governments and our secret service organizations respect their citizens a lot more (or maybe they do everything in secrecy, if you're into conspiracy theories, which I'm not, unless we're talking the orwellian Xbox One) and said organizations are not above the law; if they went against citizen rights, they would have to face the consequences. Spying or monitoring every single individual is definitely against our rights, they're only entitled to monitor and watch suspects of crimes or "targeted" groups of people that are suspected of being into big embezzlement schemes, child pornography/snuff/abduction/human trafficking rings.

It's difficult to change this in the US, since your country seems to be corporation and lobby controlled. Not even politically or judicially, but economically (all countries are, but the US seem to be even more so). This means companies and lobbies and corporations are above the law and are given charte blanche to do whatever they please and, in fact, everyone seems to be below the NSA. I distinctly recall people standing by Microsoft when they came forth saying they do provide data to the NSA whenever they ask them to, because they "have to do so". Even if it goes against citizen's rights. That would never happen in Europe or with an european based company; if a secret service organization asks for private data, they'd better have a court order to substantiate it, or else they get nothing.