Evidence?
The FBI had access to the Boston bombers phone calls.
* http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-july-dec1... (important part at 2:10)
* http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telepho...
I'll quote the slip up of Tim Clemente, a former FBI agent:
> All digital communications are uh uh... There's a way to look at digital communications in the past. And I can't go into detail of how that's done or what's done but I can tell you that no digital communication is secure.
I'll just quote the lead:
> The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
And more recently, GCHQ's JTRIG program. [2]
Again, I'll quote:
> (The core self-identified purposes of JTRIG is to) use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable
[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...
[2]: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
Think about it from the Dr Strangelove cold war perspective that a doomsday device would only be an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it.
Perhaps they have put all the cables in, but really do not have the resources to back up or process 99% of it.
This is not that much of a problem for them if they leak a load of powerpoint slides claiming that they do, as the result is an instant global version of Benway's panopticon, with people behaving as though they are surveilled, even when they are not.
Perhaps Snowden never stopped working for the NSA.
Then I remember that tinfoil hats were invented by the government to help focus radio waves onto the brain http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csai... and I decide to go and watch cartoons.
On reflection, there is probably such a thing as reading too much Robert Anton Wilson.
Then take into consideration their budget and various data centers and it seems that they are capable of doing this at any scale desired.
So they've shown the desire and capability. It's not direct evidence but it's pretty strong.
The NSA have twisted their use of language - to try and claim that "recording phone calls of US citizens" isn't an illegal act until a human being listens to one of those recordings.
I'm 99.999% sure that a "jury of peers" would not interpret the law that way. (Which might be why the need "special courts" without juries…)
You're carrying water for some seriously un-American people. The only reason you're not upset about it is that it doesn't seem to be affecting you, personally, at the moment.
Other countries also might not have the same supposed privacy guarantees in their constitution so it doesn't even have to be symmetric (say Australians somehow spy both on us and their citizens).
If you want the truth about what these asshats are up to, just read their electric bill.