Lots of people will disagree with me, but here's the primary point of disagreement for many people (Not all) I've discussed this issue with.
People are afraid that someone is watching them do there petty little things (Watch porn, send hate mail, etc) You'd never know they were watching you in the first place and do you really think the Government cares about what weird things we do so long as we aren't trying to blow up some bridge. And of-course we are all good people right? And we shouldn't worry? Yes and no. The NSA has many pros and cons.
We live in an age of cyber-space where things can be transmitted across the world in mere instants, or where people can tap into your webcams and microphones on your phones. Although we've came so very far from our primitive ancestors, the world still has a few very dangerous people with some very dangerous toys. Sometimes governments have to act and if that's out of constitution well then there going to have to do it, the needs of many outweigh the needs of individuals. This is done by monitoring web-traffic and picking out key words and choosing who to pick and follow.
A retired officer who served in the US military once explained this to me (He use to have a VERY large security clearance) Want to know why things like surveillance gets enacted? Because the higher-ups see things and know things that people like us don't know, and probably don't want to know. Terrorism is a very real thing all over the world, and of-course we all want to be able to sit in our homes and live happy lives, the world is monitored so we don't have to worry.
We still live in a VERY free country, want to know why? All these government leaks in a non-free country would be approached a very different way. Those people who have the audacity to leak classified information out would be dead, they'd use all there security measures and tracking devices to hunt them down and kill them. So of-course we live in a nice country where we can bitch and moan about some people who know much more about the under-workings of the world than us keeping tabs on the bad guys.
We can hunt down multiple kinds of guys now with this technologies and cause justice, we can stop acts of terrorism, we can return kidnapped children, we can do so much. Of-course this power is good until it gets into the wrong hands.
I know the counter-argument to my claims and that is, more power to do good basically means the more bad you can do with it. We haven't blown our selves up with nuclear weapons yet right? Because the NSA at the moment are in the hands of sane people and not complete morons, I read these guys are only paid about 40k a year to monitor people. They aren't paid much at all. A very middle-class job and a shitty one too.
And if the NSA screws us over in the end, I guess I'm wrong but I don't see that being the problem right now. The REAL problem is all of our debt, welfare and all of that junk in the USA. Basically people exploiting the government finding ways they can vote themselves into getting gifts. People are the problem now, not the government.