No NSA fan myself, so I'm not going to defend them. Snooping on Americans' phone records was definitely a violation of the right to privacy, among others. The good news is that it's over now
Perhaps now we have one more reason to avoid voice calls through phone and do that through Whatsapp or other VoIP services. Since they are encrypted, I don't think that anyone can snoop them (unless someone physically manages to install spyware on the phone). In this case they have done that to the terrorists, but I am sure that there may be other incidents, when this was done to law abiding citizens.
The NSA, CIA, MI6, the Russians, Israel and all competent spy agencies have webcrawlers that collect all public forum posts, blogs, social media posts, some leaked emails and more. If your posts and expressions are consistent in having
I hate the government, down on democracy, praise Allah, jihad jihad jihad, dirty bombs and many more, you will be more closely under surveilance.
I reckon bitcointalk might be under heavy surveilance before because there were many radical libertarians. At present, not anymore. Too many account farmers and spammers hehehehe.