I do pretty much agree with all your points. The revelation that NSA was engaged in economic spying definitely brought their moral highground way down to earth, even if the nature of the spying was somewhat more geopolitical than what China was doing (going after national energy companies, in NSA's case). But a few caveats:

>You're completely restricted in your rights to do anything that the government finds a matter of "national security". Even if it's not related to any official entity [1]

There are very few countries where this is not the case, even supposed extremely liberal countries like the Nordic ones. State secrets and national security are always going to be a monolith hanging over us for centuries. What needs to improve is the internal regulations and auditing behind these processes, to ensure strict adhere to public (not classified) laws and regulations.

I am not nationalistic or even patriotic in the least. I don't like a lot of what the US government and intelligence community does. However, I do see it as the lesser evil when you compare other superpowers like Russia and China.