Earlier quoted context omitted.
For breaking the law and working to undermine the Constitution? Is that not a big enough claim? Maybe blame specific people (the DIR NSA Hayden, Bush, Obama). There was a strong culture at NSA of NOT spying on Americans until those clowns came along.
But spying on other people is okay, simply because where they had the audacity to be born? Nations are fictions and depriving rights to a group that you permit to others based on nationality is entirely unjust. I blame the specific people who built these systems to collect and process data for the military.
If the British had had better intel they would never have invaded Afghanistan to repulse an imaginary Russian annexation. If intel had been listened to, instead of deliberately ignored/fabricated by Bush we wouldn't have invaded Iraq because of imaginary WMDs. If Kennedy hadn't actively understood the intel on Cuba, and just left it to the fears of the generals, the US would have invaded Cuba. The biggest fear of the Warsaw Pact is that the West would invade -- which was the West's fear also -- to the point that a lack of intelligence on Western force movements almost resulted in a counter-premptive invasion.
So maybe nations are fictions, but they are pretty powerful ones that most people are happy to roll with, and that makes the consequences real. These same people can agree on a set of collective norms that control who/what/where can be surveilled.
The propaganda that there are many ISIS terrorists embedded in Western nations is the key lever which will be used to transition from military/national intelligence to the surveillance state. This can't be won by railing against the NSA, but by countering (islamic and fascist) extremism, false reporting and propaganda.
And yet in the mean time we are being outflanked by traditional nation state adversaries using strategic propaganda campaigns. And they won't hesitate to spy on us. I want NSA(/GCHQ/DGSE/8200) working hard to prevent that, instead of navel gazing illegal programs about spying on environmentalists/unionists/politicans.