I keep seeing this John Oliver segment brought up in threads related to Snowden & the NSA - it's a comedy show! While interesting, it is not statistically significant proof that "most of society apparently couldn't care less." 0.33% of the US is more than 1 million people. They show ~8 tourists in Times Square on a cold morning in April.

Additionally, being able to identify Snowden is not necessarily indicative of public awareness and concern around issues of civil liberty, privacy, etc. When you do go looking for these numbers they of course vary wildly based on the poll source, questions asked, etc. As a quick example, these two pew reports[1][2] can be interpreted pretty differently.

Does anybody know of any great analysis that's been done in this space?

[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/14/nsa-opinion/country/unit... [2] http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=1858375&pid...