You're right. It was a base ad hominem, and I probably deserve to be banned for my behavior (if I haven't been already - there are so many bizarre punishment methods on this site that it's hard to tell).
Yet, reading what you actually have to say, I strongly feel compelled not to waste my time arguing you literally. I attacked you, because I tire of silly accounts with keyboard-warrior usernames showing up and spewing garbage defending the government with little-to-no rationality. It also makes me angry that someone is being paid with tax-payer dollars to post complete crap.
However, in the interest of the general populace, I'll be happy to point out why I disagree:
Have any of the NSA leaks told us anything we don't know?
Yes. The NSA very strongly painted (in what little time they spent talking about their programs) the picture that the program was used mostly for foreign surveillance, and that blanket domestic spying was absurd, paranoid and not of interest to them. The leaks contradict this. (source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/nsa-chief-denies-do...)
Haven't the majority of the leaks told our foreign enemies how to avoid being tracked more than anything?
No. The "bad guys" with half a brain were savvy to techniques for avoiding government surveillance before the leaks (source: http://www.hstoday.us/industry-news/general/single-article/n...). That is, al-Qaeda, who aren't exactly the most hi-tech organization in existence (to my understanding - please educate me if I am misinformed), are smart enough to realize that encrypting their traffic is a good idea; more organized groups caught on long ago (source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/110841/article.html).
I have yet to see any serious abuse of the NSA's power.
Since you like name-dropping fallacies: "no true Scotsman fallacy." What constitutes a 'serious' abuse of power is subjective, but my ethical reasoning says that vacuuming up most Americans communications online without explicit knowledge or consent is abuse in and of itself. Further, we've already seen the love interest scandal, which clearly constitutes abuse (by my reasoning).
The fact that they know that low level employees were spying on potential love interests means that they have a system in place to track such abuses.
And yet, the fact still stands that they used taxpayer money to fund a system that stored all of that information on people they were supposed to be serving, misled them about how much of it they had, and then abused it. Whether or not they caught it later is irrelevant.
Leaking those kind of emails can be spun to state the opposite, when those emails are direct evidence that such abuses are tracked and presumably punished.
Moronic, illogical nonsense.
I've seen articles that have said "what if they use this power to subvert political dissidents" Well, what if they actually have checks built into this system as they have claimed and this new information proves?
So what? Does that justify having the information in the first place? I think not; I do not care that the state has the right to cut off my left arm to make cat food, if and only if a supervisory committee agrees that doing so is reasonable. The basic violation of a perceived right is the issue.
Wouldn't that make Snowden a spy with his own self interests at heart, not the interests of the American people? Leaking piece-meal like he has is in his interests, not ours.
Yes, perhaps he is. The thing is, what Snowden is or does, is irrelevant, because I only care about his message, since the discussion is concerned with abuse of authority, and Snowden has little-to-no sanctioned authority to abuse. What's that called when you attack the person instead of the message, AsymetricCom? Oh. Right. Ad hominem.
Look at the scope of these systems. The fact that no abuses have come up (locally) is quite telling, imho.
Once again, the concern is that these systems exist in the first place, not that no abuse has been documented.
When this same type of hardware is in the hands of countries like China, we see these abuses. Is China seeing something we don't and just not telling us? I highly doubt it.
What China does or doesn't do is absolutely irrelevant to the issue of the United States government's actions.
In conclusion, you seem to like to act logical when it's convenient, but abandon all signs of it when making your point.