The NSA's endless budget expansion is now at risk, while almost half of the House of Reps voted to nearly shut the program down last week.

No doubt, the next mid-term cycle will be dominated by people on the left and right, campaigning on the promise to shut down these insane programs. The next campaign for President will likely turn out the same.

From Obama's perspective, this is a complete nightmare. His legacy as President will be tarnished, with even the true believers now deeply disillusioned.

When I look back at US History, the really big changes in society/law required a significant uprising of the people.

I don't fully understand why Obama was such a proponent of a surveillance state, as well. It is disappointing, but to me it's only somewhat of a problem. I think a surveillance society is 100% inevitable. It is not possible to prevent it, nor is it necessarily the end of all freedom so long as we take care as we're shaping it to make it so that surveillance is uniform and everyone has access to a reasonable portion of the data. That's the best we can do to create a reasonable series of norms around it.

If the NSA tried to stop the process and acted against the orders of the Commander-in-chief, Obama should then recall the US Military and destroy the NSA with brute force, treating it as a hostile domestic militia that is attempting a coup. Game over. Sound far fetched? No, it's just a standard issue government revolution, no different than what has gone on throughout history all across the map.

Also anything that Obama does now can easily be reverted; there is little time nor there is sufficient political capital to pass this as a law, and any executive order can be overturned completely by the next administration.

Obama can't dismantle the NSA, he can't cut their budget, he can't do anything of meaning at this point there is too much momentum behind these programs to stop them if the next administration would indeed want to keep them or expand them.

In his last 2.5 months he can't really do anything but pack.

Lack of any targeted surveillance is not the alternative.

The alternative is to have to get individual warrants that are targeted, specific, limited. The political machine that Obama is part of hates this alternative.

However we are not talking about a classroom scenario in which we are prioritizing our phones over other values.

The US Government secretly built a massive illegal surveillance infrastructure for spying on the American public and the citizens of nations we consider allies!

Since the programs were revealed by Snowden and corroborated by others, Obama has not once spoken directly about the excesses. He has not accepted responsibility for any mistakes, or vowed to take any corrective action. He's simply ignored the issue and let a few outspoken retirees from the intelligence community wage the PR campaign on his behalf.

Many of us realize that if we can't use strong encryption on devices, the power and scope of existing surveillance will increase dramatically.

Many of us realize that there has not just been a propaganda campaign by government to legitimize its surveillance goals, but outright lies reassuring the public that the data would only be used to fight terrorism (itself subject to an ever-expanding definition).

As we should all have learned by now, any mention of terrorism or child abuse or accusations of "absolutism" is clear evidence that we are hearing a propaganda message.

Government does not care about enforcing laws for the sake of justice, it cares about perpetuating its own power. The key insight of the American Revolution was that government should have reduced and carefully enumerated powers. Obama disagrees strongly with this.

If this is what happens when we elect an former constitutional scholar to high office, I shudder to think what will happen when someone with less exposure to enlightened ideas takes the helm.

Obama has never been "liberal". He capitalized during his first campaign by proposing a more business-friendly version of national healthcare, subtly eroding support from Clinton, while pretending to the democratic base that he had made fewer compromises and was more true to the party's views.

Both major American political parties are predominantly conservative. This is the only explanation for the success of someone like Trump, who is an extreme authoritarian more than a holder of any specific political ideology. With these remarks we see clearly the strong authoritarian streak in Obama, and also the blatant propagandist attempting to lure us into granting Government excessive power by fear-mongering about terrorism (which was George W. Bush's most insidious trait).

The key point is that we can't trust a government that has already betrayed our trust substantially and has not acknowledged the scope of illegal surveillance or sought remedies to restore the public trust. Also, the FBI's botched handling of the San Bernadino shooter's phone shows us that our most trusted law enforcement agency lacks basic competency with technology.

It is not an absolutist stance to call out the lies, propaganda and mishandling of data. It's simply common sense exercised by people who actually understand the power of data and the significance of widespread breach of that privacy. In order to engage in a calm and timely debate, Obama has to acknowledge and address the excesses that were revealed.

We should all expect more from our president than propaganda and fear-mongering.

Would we be so upset with Obama if the response to the NSA revelations was the firing of the NSA leadership, a solid investigation of wrongdoings, firing of those found to have been guilty of abusing their powers, and reparations to those wrongfully convicted under evidence unlawfully gathered by the NSA?

I mean, if the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security weren't in this group of 16, wouldn't the discussion be completely different?

Lastly, who says the minimization that the NSA had been doing itself so far didn't just consist of removing noise? The requests have been and will continue to be confidential after all.

Obama is a proponent of very strong intelligence agencies which certainly must be criticized, but the hysteria and fear-mongering that's happening right now completely misses the issues that have to be solved first, imho.

I think people have misinformed notions about how much power the president really has. Obama's stated core focus was and has been on improving the situation for the poor/middle class. That's a big task on its own, I don't think you can expect one president to take on and dominate such variety of large tasks.

But now that things are in the open, support a candidate who in clear terms promises challenging these NSA programs for the next election cycle. Yes, Obama said he would do this in his own campaign trail, but it was unclear probably to him what he was up against exactly and how difficult it would have been to resist it alone. My optimistic take is now that we all know to a much greater degree what's going on, we're in better position to do something about it.

(Not that we can expect different behavior from any of the future Presidents, nor from the recent ones.)

I've said it before, but I also believe that the NSA now has the power to make sure that presidents toe the line.

The question everyone needs to ask themselves is; who's line are they toeing? Who's the piper? Who is the power behind the throne?

It might just be conspiracy theory, but the problem is the NSA now genuinely have the capability to do this. Even if they aren't, how would we know if somebody rogue came in to head up the NSA; an American Joseph Goebbels for example. We wouldn't even know, because all of those secret courts and secret policies would hide the reality from the public until it was too late.

I just hope that we aren't too late already.

Blame NSA, or whoever, all you want. They serve at the pleasure of their customer.

Obama campaigned on the promise to end domestic surveillance, and while politicians lie all the time to get elected, listening to him speak back then I believed him. He was a strong orator and was saying what I wanted to hear which admittedly makes my judgement there a bit suspect, but he also had a long history of speaking out against things like the patriot act, the illegal wiretapping of Americans, and national security letters.

Once he got into office however, instead of reining in the NSA he greatly expanded the NSA's ability to spy on the American public and he started defending them in speeches. I've often wondered if he was shown something highly classified that convinced him that violating every American's rights was genuinely needed, or if he was just threatened into compliance by showing him what information they'd collected on him and his family.