If it were such a simple decision, to put your trust in institutions versus individuals, we wouldn't have an issue. Unfortunately, the interests of any institution are driven by the clique that controls it, effected by those that encompass it, supported by those that fund it, and opposed by those it disturbs. The institutions themselves are interdependent and so the placement of trust onto one institution without checks and expecting any other outcome than the monstrosity our surveillance infrastructure has become is a grave error; one that has already been committed.

It is inarguably not the fault of the NSA directly that their information systems were used in other, potentially illegal ways. It's hard to blame anyone when a local county police officer gets an order from the state drug enforcers to pull over a car for any possible reason. It's hardly the fault of the state police for following the instructions of the local DEA office. And it's hardly the DEA's fault that their information about drugs coming from foreign countries, information that came directly from the NSA, is accurate and actionable. Furthermore, it's none of their responsibility to question the legality of how the information was acquired. They have it and are able to use it in conjunction with a drug-sniffing dog to detect the drugs without, in theory, breaking any laws.

However, this situation can only exist because our rights were traded for security. One could argue that stopping this car is absolutely necessary, and that if the information that "a black SUV is travelling east on the highway around 8pm and carrying narcotics" is available, that it should be actionable. However, this makes for a lot of upset middle-aged mothers and their children being pulled over at gun-point and approached with the "extreme prejudice" mentality because the situation was pre-empted by intelligence information. Reliance on trust in eavesdropping on everybody effectively leads to living a life of terror where it is common-place to be considered a suspect before being clearly identified as one.

This is so common that just in the past 5 years we've had numerous reports of tactical assaults on the vehicles and homes of unsuspecting citizens. Surely, all of us would react to such a situation with an intention to defend ourselves; it is expected and entirely justified. However, it is equally justified for a police force to react with deadly force to a criminal they have been following and know to be dangerous. It is completely inappropriate for the police to approach someone whom they only suspect of being a criminal because of "intelligence information," and attempting to settle the situation with deadly force.

No, we cannot have our entire trust in institutions. Sometimes, we must count on the people that constitute them to make the right choice. It is clear that the abuses to the people that came as a windfall from the lack of oversight in the intelligence community were planting seeds for many Snownden-type actors. We are only left to wonder how many of them were detected in the past year and neutralized surreptitiously. If we can't trust our government to establish internal checks, then we must rely on individuals to alert us of its failures. They most certainly will not do so themselves.