Continuous manipulation
I appreciate the efforts of the EFF and Bruce Schneier to describe how they believe the intercepts, etc, are being effected. I use 'are' because no-one says they've stopped.
Worse now, on the government's part here in the UK, the propoganda backlash seems to be moving into play. This week we've had the great and the good, including the Liberal Democrat coalition lackeys, making statements/seeding stories to the media that Snowden's material is worse than the 'great' spy leaks of the Cold War and all the material is greatly aiding Moscow and Bejing's cause.
But we don't have the great axis of evil communism anymore, pivoted between Bejing and Moscow, we have two large nations with whom the world trades freely and, certainly in the case of China, without whom the rest of the world would have near empty shops. High tech companies frequently have R&D and manufacturing outposts there too.
So I don't see who these governments are 'fighting' with this mass surveillance. The terrorists don't need the Internet, they're not real-time; more traditional crooks, maybe; snooping on the competition, likely; but I can only conclude that they spending the citizens taxes on wealth generation scheme for the corner of big business that sell these services.
Maybe it's simply the fact that that Snowden was a little too smart, saw through the scripts he had to follow and the fallacy of the whole thing.