I disagree strongly! The NSA's technology would more properly be called super-Orwellian. Two-way TV, hidden microphones, and steaming open your mail is nothing compared with what the NSA can do.
If we don't stop this now, and don't make it explicitly illegal, and actually punish the people involved (otherwise they's no downside to continuing it), then it will get a lot worse in the future.
Also, how can US law be so asymmetrical? It's illegal to look into someone's mail, which just includes one single conversation, but it's not to look at someone's real-time conversations for a long time, which can include all sorts of topics, and then multiply that by millions of people.
If looking into just one mail conversation is illegal, how come mass surveillance isn't immediately seen as massively illegal?
And that warrant is obtained whenever, in the future, that that person opposes the national interests. Then it's like you've been spying on them all along. Retroactive wiretapping!
(Just kidding...)
Not that I'm defending current practices, but if we ever get to mandatory mass surveillance it will definitely be worse than covert mass surveillance that the most informed citizens can still choose to avoid.
With 1984, at least, the book implies that the proles had some measure of freedom from surveillance (though the plot also suggests that it's still there but more surreptitious). Short of living on a commune and totally removing yourself from the broader economy, what can people actually do to avoid NSA surveillance as it exists today, let alone a decade from now?
It's pretty easy for any two informed citizens to avoid those means of communication. When you're corresponding with someone who doesn't care if the government spies on them, no level of paranoia will keep your messages private.
The difference is that in 1984, the cameras were put there by the government. Today, people themselves unknowingly put those cameras there.