Sorry, but what do you mean we "finally have proof"? We have insinuations that they are ahead of the field in cracking encryption standards and that they work with companies to easy surveillance, but that alone is not enough to show that they we all have been "spied on, all the time"...and certainly, not "there's little or nothing that can be done about it."

Have you already forgotten about Edward Snowden? The NSA contractor (i.e outside employee, and by most accounts, not a high-level one in terms of ranking) copied tens of thousands of documents and secret files? Maybe you read that he, too, was a regular Internet user. In fact, he was a frequent anonymous poster to Ars Technica, where, according to reports:

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/21/nation/la-na-nsa-sno...

> But in hundreds of online postings dating back a decade, Snowden also denounced "pervasive government secrecy" and criticized America's "unquestioning obedience towards spooky types."

If the NSA has a continuous surveillance program going on, it sure sucks if it couldn't unmask its rebellious contractor before he went and took a bunch of files with him to Hong Kong. And it doesn't seem that he did much to hide his identity, if Ars Technica could de-anonymize him.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to downplay this situation. But your defeatism is just as naive as what you probably think of Americans who don't seem to mind the NSA. If you're really upset about this whole thing, how is your unfounded attitude of "there's little or nothing that can be done about it" going to contribute much? I would argue that that kind of easy cynicism is what helps us get into these scenarios in the first place.