So every piece of paper the NSA touches is classified, and we're told that even the most innocent dripple of bits of information are vital to national security.

And here is the CTO working part-time for private companies. I wonder how discussions with clients at this security consultancy go? "Should we use TLS for our internal networks?" "Uhh.. let me think about this... uhh.. I think that's classified".

Right, that is clearly how it will go down.