Zenpundit nails it. NSA surveillance is so Orwellian and omnipresent that it poses a huge security risk to whoever can compromise the data. If Snowden could, then many others can and probably have too. Plus, we already know that NSA swaps data with private corporations. All this data the NSA promises will only be accessed by warrant is instead flying all over cyberspace with apparently no controls.
The mere existence of so massive a database on the data of all Americans is itself a critical strategic vulnerability and a potential risk to the national security of the United States because it centralizes for any would be spy or hacker not just anything, but virtually *everything* they would want to know about *everyone*. The greatest testament against the strategic wisdom of this scheme from a counterintelligence perspective is the erstwhile Mr. Edward Snowden – breach just one security regime and you walk away with the whole store or as much of the store as you have time and brains to snatch.
How many Snowdens have we *not* heard about because they were quietly fired by a contractor? How many other Snowdens working for foreign intelligence services eluded government detection and got away with who knows what? Or are still doing it now?
Not exactly a resilient system from a cybersecurity perspective, is it?
What the USG has done here is not dumb. It is fucking dumb with a capital F.