"Historically, the plea of superior orders has been used both before and after the Nuremberg Trials, with a notable lack of consistency in various rulings."
For example, if someone got a job on a shark finning boat maintaining the knives, they're still complicit in shark finning even if they're never touched or seen a shark in their life.
And even if their actual role was spying on and helping detain Americans for arbitrary reasons, nobody's going to slap that on their resume. They'd say they were a data aggregating administrative officer.
Why should we respect those that spy on us? Would you expect Germans respect the Stasi?
I think that has a lot to do about which social circles you move in. If I saw NSA on a CV I would throw it in the trash.
True, but the "boots on the ground" are OK with it enough to go along with it. Their hands may not be quite as dirty, but they certainly aren't clean.
At the end of the day, the dragnet surveillance decisions came from the highest levels of the Bush and Obama administrations, not the boots on the ground.