"Hello Senator thanks so much for meeting with us today. We understand you're considering co-sponsoring that new 'privacy' bill. We just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to emphasize some points that we feel have some bearing on the bill in question.
"I have here in front of me a few hard copies of some of your communications. I must say, they make for some interesting reading..."
Given this, congress has passed some pretty nasty stuff. But they were doing it for all the best reasons. They are honorable people, who likely wouldn't fold to blackmail, if they thought that they were being blackmailed into doing something bad for the US. I respect them that much, at least.
Why don't you dig around and look at all the pieces of information, abuses, problems not corrected, situations allowed to spiral out of control, the waste of trillions of dollars, the cover ups, the intimidation, the assassinations, the governments overthrown, the hundreds of thousands of dead in other countries..., then come have a discussion about evil and the folks the control our government.
I'm curious to know your age. I used to feel as you do, but as people get older they tend to get more cynical. In particular, the idea that Americans are intrinsically honorable died an abrupt death in my mind after studying some of our history. Blackmail is one of the most basic tools in politics, and it's just that: a tool. Framing an effective tool as evil is beside the point, because an effective tool is always going to end up being used. And indeed we see that it's been used astonishingly often since WWII (and certainly before that as well). The most obvious example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover but there are many more.
For what it's worth, the founding fathers probably wouldn't want you to assume our government are honorable people who wouldn't fold to blackmail. They would encourage you to assume the worst, and then be pleasantly surprised if your expectations were proven wrong. Thus far, the evidence has been pretty grim.
Snowden seems to share your ideals and belief system (e.g. belief in honor for honor's sake and "people will do what's right, not merely what's lucrative") yet he was so offended by what he ultimately discovered at the NSA that he fled the country and left his life behind in order to expose it. In other words, he did what he thought was best for his country based on his ideas of what is best, and his ideals seem to be pretty close to yours.
Why wouldn't that include suppression of political initiatives that could interfere with the NSA's mission?
I am more willing to accept the possibility if it's shown to be true that they've been conducting surveillance on US politicians and officials. Not that spying on foreign politicians is good or moral, but the reasons are different at least.
We already know that surveillance in the US is pervasive. And that includes politicians, judges, and everyone else in government.
It's just a small step to using that information for safeguarding NSA's mission.
Perhaps I'm just naive, but I like to think at their core they're not so immoral as to degrade themselves to that sort of behavior.