People have been cynical about politics and politicians for hundreds -- thousands -- of years. This was the single most illuminating fact of some of my college literature courses -- reading the views of the past as recorded at the time, vs the slanted "everything was great!" or "everything was terrible!" perspectives we usually get from today. (Your specific mistake here is thinking that not caring about something you care about -- like the NSA stuff -- is the same as total apathy.)

There's no magical "back in the day" when everything was better. It's up to us to make things better, lamenting changes or new technology and longing for a lost past that never was won't help.

Long before we had "fake news" vs "real news" we had "no news" and hearsay from a dude in a bar. Same shit, different day.