Well, Brooks come off as a huge blowhard to me, but the government is pretty objectively less evil than it's been in the past (My Lai, COINTELPRO, Syphilis testing on unsuspecting blacks, state-condoned lynching, Trail of Tears, ECHELON, HUAC, Slavery, the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, "Separate But Equal", Kent State, Jim Crow laws, Nisei detainment camps, etc. etc. etc.)

I personally feel the reason that leaking is increasing is simply that it's easier to do, and the perceived consequences on national security are much less.

Back in the day you leak nuclear missile plans and you could get the entire world killed by tipping MAD over too far. But even this leak of NSA collection schemes will not drastically change the overall geopolitical picture, even if it does potentially lead to degradation of counter-terrorism capability.

However it's also possible that people are becoming more idealistic faster than the government is becoming less evil, which would IMO explain much of the hysterics over issues like this that can't be explained by their relative impact in an historical context.