I think most of the outrage is about two things, which are missed by people who point out the problem is political and that snooping is technically "legal":

1) The disconnect between policymakers / lawmakers and the general population, that built up over time. While in some areas people are content to look away, or don't care that much about, in the area of civil rights and privacy apparently enough people care to keep raising a stink about this. It's not that something is technically illegal. It's a question of how did we get to the point where it's not. Where you don't need a warrant to read anyone's email, or demand any US company hand over pretty much any info on anyone. Where are the 3-branch checks and balances for things like National Security Letters, for example?

http://i.imgur.com/GPyb5uC.jpg

2) The natural people's reaction to advancing technology. Since recording everything everywhere is now becoming possible, we should get used to it. We are unlikely to successfully outlaw this anymore than we can successfully police pirating of songs. If governments aren't going to record you, corporations will. Facebook keeps a "shadow profile" on everyone including people who didn't sign up. They use this data for various corporate purposes. All we can do is perhaps regulate what purposes they cannot use the data for, but it's extremely hard to prevent them from collecting it. So organizations will collect data, because it's in their interest -- stores, for example, will soon track your shopping habits as you move around the store, and optimize their sales for this. They might do facial recognition or some other biometric thing.

#2 is the more interesting issue and I think it falls into the bigger issue of people coping with advances in technology. Google glasses on everyone's head? Cameras everywhere giving you a ticket as soon as you speed over the limit for 10 seconds? (Don't laugh, we already have many tollbooths implementing speeding tickets by simply timing how long it took you to get from one to the next.) Cameras in every parking lot signaling the tow truck as soon as you leave? 3d printing guns from models? Anyone able to release a virus on a subway? Etc etc.

I've always said that terrorism is a problem of technology. 1000 years ago it was literally impossible for 5 people to kill 1000, but nowadays our society will begin more and more to watch everyone. As it becomes easier, surveillance (and, what's more unnerving, automatic curation and analysis by computers!!) will become an accepted part of life. Remember how you felt when you thought you could upload copyrighted stuff to YouTube and get away with it?

Before: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/youtube-the-big-cop...

After: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/youtube-vs-fair-use...

Here we have a case of "big brother" copyright enforcement being made possible through cross referencing the fingerprint of EVERYTHING uploaded into YouTube. We learned to live with it, and few people complain. But this is just the beginning :(

10 years from now, your children may get taken away by the state because you have been caught surfing the wrong sites or saying stuff to siri (uploaded to Apple servers) that has been proven to correlate highly to child molestation or neglect. It won't happen right away, but instead an indexed archive of your activities will be retrieved and analyzed and a case built.

And if a government doesn't do it, then an insurance company might do it to raise your rates, etc. If you park your car in a parking lot and do not enter the diner within 5 mins, as determined by the computer, you'll get an automatic ticket. And so forth.

Thankfully many of these problems will be eliminated before they even become issues. You won't have to park your car because self-driving cars will make owning a car a luxury. You won't need to worry about your kids' college future because education will be delivered via the internet to every home. Etc.