What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

Except nothing has changed. This has been going on for enough time that if the average Internet user hasn't been effected by it yet then they don't have much to worry about in the near future. So for the immediate future there are absolutely no implications on users other than being aware that someone can look at your communications, which you should have assumed already. Because if the NSA didn't already have your information than Google, Facebook and every other social network certainly did, something that we have been well aware of for a long time.

The danger as I see it is negligible to the average Internet user, until they become a person of interest to someone with the power to use these programs - a journalist say might pursue their work for decades without being interfered with, but with all their correspondence stored, only to find themselves undermined fatally by their actions at the age of 19 when they broke a story which the administration didn't like, decades later. In the same way that Nixon abused surveillance powers to undermine reporters, someone high up in the chain of command could redirect the NSA for their own purposes - if there is no open judicial oversight and no respect for the rule of law, this is inevitable. I wouldn't want to live in a world where that is possible.

What I find disturbing about these tools is that they are far more suited to retrospective analysis, and therefore to discovering dirt on ordinary people and undermining the rule of law, than suited to tracking terrorists (the ostensible aim). They'd be far more useful to someone like Nixon than to someone genuinely concerned with promoting America's interests in the world and stopping terrorist attacks, because those planning serious attacks will simply use other means of communication (as in Bin Laden's use of paper and messengers). In addition to that they are so wide-ranging that the damage and danger caused by them far outweighs any possible benefit.

Also this sort of powerful bureaucracy has a way of ensuring its own survival after it reaches a certain size and power - after all if the NSA hears politicians are planning to shut them down, they might have to take steps to stay in business - a very easy task with tame secret courts rubber-stamping requests and a culture of little respect for the rights of those surveilled. Just a matter of digging up their surveillance on most of congress (who of course have all had contact with foreigners, so fair game), and deciding where to apply leverage. Imagine then someone truly evil in charge of the NSA, and the power they could wield, unfettered by quaint notions of international law or oversight by other branches of government.

If someone lies to your face for years and, only when caught red-handed, claims that what he/she is doing isn't all that bad, would you believe them?

It's worse than that. Not only does the U.S. government expect us to believe the content of our communications are safe from their eyes unless we "have something to hide", they're about to come down hard on the whistle-blowers that made them admit as much as they have. It's as if that red-handed thief were quietly shoving the person who caught them out a window while telling us a story about how it's not what it looks like!

What a crock.

There are both clear and subtle implications for widespread surveillance. Whether they will practically impact your life and rights depends on chance and your private habits.

Here's a broad list of consequences that is by no means exhaustive:

1. You can be indicted and charged with a number of felonies, most notably treason and violating national security, for your private correspondence and electronic habits.

2. Incidental to an existing charge, you can have your private interests and communications leveraged against you as evidence not directly relevant to what you're being tried for.

3. You can be implicated in crimes for communicating with known criminals or having any demonstrable (reasonable or otherwise) association with "people of interest." Corollary to this, you could be harassed and pursued and made to act against such people in the interests of national security.

4. You could be blackmailed or slandered in the public eye, effecticely crucifying you in the media, by taking your private life out of context in the name of the legal process.

5. You would be effectively "nude" in the virtual sense - every thing you do is and could be an actionable offense or interpreted as one, despite the fact that it's not in direct offense to anyone else and despite the fact that it's private. Your every interest, hobby and habit could be dissected and questioned as though an Orwellian thought police agent were ever vigilant in your room.

6. Innocent until proven guilty would be effectively null and void. You could be presumed guilty for all of the aforementioned reasons and due process would be extremely hard for the average individual to utilize to their advantage.

All of these would scale (against you) in a situation involving mass media. You might believe that on a cursory inspection these are justified if it prevents terrorism. That is a fear response, to which I reply that our government, and the rule of law it represents, is lost if we walk down this path.

Sacrificing liberty for the sake of liberty is both absurd and fundamentally objectionable.

Let's just say this: have you at least pirated a song or a movie, smoked marijuana and bragged about it online, or done anything at all that you know could be seen as a crime, or even stuff that you think is "moral" but probably illegal?

Okay. Then in a surveillance state you better not ever try to piss off the national leaders, or even the local ones (depends how far this gets), and you better not complain to your friends and neighbors either.

Because that's how they'll get you. Not with the last part - but with the first one. You'll just be another "pot smoker" or "pirate" and they'll demonize you as a dirty criminal who deserves prison.