Former NSA senior intelligence analyst John Schindler had some interesting responses in an interview with the Providence Phoenix:
Unless you are a member of Al Qaeda, Google knows vastly more about you than NSA does. Americans accepted the sacrifice of their privacy to large corporations actually in a way that I find mystifying, frankly. So discussing privacy and the right to privacy is not just a governmental thing.
I entirely agree with this:
Does it now need to move back toward privacy a little bit? I think it’s a great debate that the American public and Congress need to have. And one of my greatest disappointments with the Snowden saga is, briefly, Snowden perhaps opened the door to a real debate about these issues, which should happen — is overdue, in fact. The amazing bizarre saga this has become with his ’round-the-world tour, the constant leaks about NSA foreign activities, has basically killed any discussion of a serious debate in Congress over this. And I think that’s really unfortunate.
Exactly. His and Greenwald’s bungled handling of this story has hurt the cause.