In a way, things like this are a part of the whole bloody point that opponents of the NSA have been making: if you put that much surveillance power into the hands of a relatively small number of humans, then they will abuse it. These sort of incidents reveal through their pettiness some of the ways in which massive surveillance invites abuse.

> And I'm no apologist for the NSA, I just think intellectual honesty is good for our side of the argument.

Pretty much. Every fanciful tale we tell ourselves is another story that can be spun as reinforcement for why we're dismissable.

I tell myself that this kind of tactical thinking isn't the right way to motivate people to actually care about truth, but at this point, I've completely lost faith that hackers are capable of caring about the truth.