Way to miss the point. This kind of pointless pedantry focused on the wrong argument is one of the most self-damaging and hateworthy features of the tech community.
The fact that "some of it was known in the past" does not make it any less worthy of our attention today.
No one cares about your arguments, and you don't seem to care about other people's arguments either. I think the best solution for everyone is if you just go and argue somewhere where people might care.
Here is one new thing - The president has admitted that this programme exists while before in congressional committees it was denied.
The president stated that nobody listens to your data when evidence has been presented to the contrary.
No one had ever before seen a FISA court order. Most of the public was not even aware of Fisa courts. Most of the public did not know that this court has granted all requests, but two. Most of the public was not aware of secret courts interpreting secret laws while handing down secret judgments. The public did not know that a warrant was not needed but mere policy in many cases.
Etc, etc, etc.
All of this is new. The leaked documents are TOP SECRET. If top secrets becoming public knowledge is not new then what is!?
From two such completely alien starting points, there is little possible useful argument. I've been in enough online arguments in my time to recognise a lost cause.
Asking EU governments to censure the US when they have their own programs (the UK clearly does) is just naked anti-Americanism.
The existing outrageous actions of the government were finally given attention by the media, a large slice of the populace finally seems to have noticed and the government has been compelled to actually admit and address the issue. [1]
We should be upset that these outrageous policies ever existed. We should be upset that it took this damn long for the media to treat the issue with the gravity it deserves.
And we should be happy as hell it actually 'took' as a news story this time, let alone managed to stay in the news for weeks.
To the privacy conscious, it's irrelevant whether Snowden told us anything "new". What's relevant is that (for whatever reason) this long-festering problem was finally brought to the forefront in a way that has demanded attention.
I suppose if you didn't mind any of the "old news" that the government was abusing the constitution, or had made your peace with it, this might seem a pointless story.
[1] Though that's a long way from a fix, it's significantly better than the dismissive "with us or against us" defenses of the past.
If we are going to have a debate on what the scope of electronic surveillance should be, it should be an honest one. I just feel like we're replacing the ridiculous unfounded "TERRORISTS GON DESTROY 'MURICA" sentiment with an equally ridiculous unfounded "GUBMINT OUT TA GITCHYA" sentiment. I don't like having to choose between those two options.
Calm and objective hasn't so much as slowed this down.
The series of "least untruthful" statements by the Obama administration, its allies in Congress, and the leaders of the NSA and FBI suggests that there is in fact a story here.