NSA caught in Affair - FBI becomes the "Good Guy"

Everyone I know in IT security is not at all surprised with the amount of information the NSA is collecting, internationally and domestically.  It is also likely that only the most naive foreign government is surprised.  

If you were having an illicit affair, you would know it, and close friends and frenemies would as well.  Getting "called out" about the affair publicly is a far different thing.  The NSA got caught, and the worldwide press is still having a field day at their expense.  It's embarrassing.

There are some European countries with strict privacy laws, and there are people there who may be nonplussed with the news.  It appears to me that citizens in the USA currently seem to be painfully aware that they are entitled to not-so-much privacy, post 9/11.

Interestingly, I see the FBI positioning themselves as the "good guys" - at Blackhat 2013 the presentations I saw from the FBI were frank, humorous, and sort of endearing.  From a PR standpoint, the NSA is not in good field position, opening it up for the FBI to take a kinder, gentler position.  At last month's ISSA meeting in Austin, three FBI agents were there in the audience, interacting with us.

Maybe this is actually a good state of affairs.   We do want the NSA aggressively preventing terrorism, and the rules go out the window when it comes to terrorism.  It's their mission, ugly though it seems at times.  As for the purview of the FBI, law-abiding US citizens want them chasing down domestic criminals who do harm to us, not spying on our personal lives.  You have to admit, for the average law-abiding citizen, our personal lives are sort of boring in the scheme of things.