People seem to have a hard time trying to understand why the most powerful country in the world might want to try to influence other countries, or try to monitor foreign and domestic terrorists by mining data on the Internet, phone calls, etc. I think even small countries will try to do the same thing.

Yes, I also understand that some people don't want to build products, start companies, discuss cool technology, self improvement, science, etc. Maybe politics is your thing but this isn't the place to spend hours on end.

Finally, if you really do want to change something, it's going to take a lot of work. Signing a White House petition is just a waste of time. The endless Internet chatter isn't going to accomplish anything. It may require that you build something to increase government transparency, a better political chat forum, a political graph to better target government, or something a little more clever. It could be a crowd sourced project. Can we there 1,000 people here that want to contribute. I'll even pitch in.