If it's used to blackmail you, than they are committing crime here so, again, what's the fuss about?

The fuss is that the NSA is not held accountable for their crimes. They hacked the computers of the oversight committees; the Senate, Edward Snowden, have all been informed of NSA crimes and nobody is in jail. That's the problem.

If they decide you committed a crime, then you get disappeared, and that's starting to look too much like Russia. The only reason Edward Snowden is not in jail or disappeared right now is because A) He made it to russia and B) He has garnered too much national attention. If anything happens to him, everybody in the entire world will know that it was the NSA and we will collectively crush them.

The problem is there can be no "collectively crushing" of anybody if the attention is not garnered because you DISAPPEARED. Our constitution reminds us to protect, at all costs, our ability to overthrow the government. This is not because we WANT to overthrow the government - I think we can all agree that a good government is essential to any society - merely that it's important that we BE ABLE TO hold our government accountable, and right now, our own GOVERNMENT can't hold the NSA accountable, and that's a problem.

You sit there in your armchair of ignorance spouting the same ignorant trash, "Well if you're going to commit a crime then it's perfectly acceptable to have every single one of your rights violated" which is BULLSHIT. No, the problem is oversight. The problem is government accountability. It is all over the internet - everyone saying the same thing.

I wholeheartedly support homeland security; that's all well and good, but we need to have OVERSIGHT and, most of all, whistleblower protections. Yes, every citizen in the US has a RIGHT to know when the government is BREAKING THE LAW and we have an expectation that those who break the law be held accountable. That's exactly what is not happening and the problem.

Chelsea Manning is sitting in prison for exposing what any rational person would consider war crimes. What's most telling about this kind of thing is I have a RATIONAL FEAR that I am "not allowed" to say this kind of thing without being put on a "list" somewhere as "antipatriotic" when in REALITY I love this country and want to make sure we don't allow it to become FUBAR.