The oath Snowden took to the consitution was more important than one to secrecy

They had made the claim that it would be more difficult but failed to provide any proof that it would. That is the one of the main problems with the claims made by the NSA, they are just claims with no proof. Anyone can make a statement and claim it to be true but in order for it to be deemed a fact you must provide some hard evidence to support the claim. In a court of law a claim is not going to be considered hard evidence. The NSA has violated the "Wiretap Act" "The Wiretap Act broadly prohibits the intentional interception, use, or disclosure of wire and electronic communications unless a statutory exception applies. In general, these prohibitions bars third parties (including the government) from wiretapping telephones and installing electronic "sniffers" that read Internet traffic" They have name zero statutes that would exempt them from the Wiretap Act. They have also violated "The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1986) Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA") to expand the scope of existing federal wiretap laws, such as the Wiretap Act, to include protection for electronic communications. ECPA expanded the privacy protections of the Wiretap Act in five significant ways: 1.ECPA broadened the scope of privileged communications to include all forms of electronic transmissions, including video, text, audio, and data. 2.ECPA eliminated the requirement that communications be transmitted via common carrier to receive legal protection. 3.ECPA maintained restrictions on the interception of messages in transmission and adds a prohibition on access to stored electronic communications. 4.ECPA responded to the Supreme Court's ruling in Smith v. Maryland (June 1979) that telephone toll records are not private and restricts law enforcement access to transactional information pertaining to users of electronic communication services. 5.ECPA broadened the reach of the Wiretap Act by restricting both government and private access to communications. [full text] Computer Security Act (1987) The Computer Security Act reaffirmed that the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is responsible for the security of unclassified, non-military government computer systems. The main purpose of the Act is to protect unclassified information from military intelligence agencies. However, the Act has since been weakened, primarily as a result of the efforts of the National Security Agency. " "The fact is that the government does not have any malicious intent with their intelligence gathering" What evidence do you present to support this claim? Unless you are a member of the NSA that's a rather presumptuous claim but nor can I prove that they do have malicious intent. That is the problem, the American people are having their rights stripped slowly but surely and we are presented with no evidence that the NSA's ends justify the means we are simply being told "Just trust us, its for your own good" JFK made a speech warning of the danger secret societies pose to our freedoms and that we should never trade our freedom for security. There's a long list of other important figures who made the same type of statements throughout American history. http://youtu.be... (describes the NSA to the T) Thomas Jefferson: "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty" "A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference." "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government" As American's we've become far too willing to sacrifice our freedoms whenever the government seeks to "suspend" them. When Obama first came into office he claimed that whistleblowers were "patriots" and that they should be protected as the video below shows. http://youtu.be... http://youtu.be... http://www.policymic.com... http://dissenter.firedoglake.com... You have made the comment that the governments core responsibilities are " 1) to protect its own existence 2) To protect the lives, health, and well-being of its own citizens" Surely you do not mean that protecting its own existence is top priority, after all the federal government was created by the states to protect our constitutional rights first and foremost. People all too often confuse patriotism with being loyal to the government but this is a fallacy. True patriotism is being loyal to the people. It is the best interest of the people that we should be more concerned with, not the other way around. We would be wise to heed the warnings of those that came before us.