If the NSA's collection of metadata isn't a big deal like some libs would have you believe...?

The primary job of the NSA is to monitor ALL communication and data to and out from the U. S as a counter-terrorism asset and providing clandestine services as well. The American public were under watch for many years before this happened but people didn't know or care too much because they were all too worried about the Soviet Union and their spies.

When Mr.Snowden leaked that information he broke his oath to secrecy and potentially given sensitive intelligence to people or groups (Foreign governments) that could have devastating repercussion against the U.S. The public generally overlooked that part when they discovered that the NSA was monitoring the phone lines and computers which means they have no privacy or feel like they no longer have free-speech. The entire situation is about Mr.Snowden leaking sensitive information about the government monitoring everything and infringing on peoples privacy. The problem is the public do better now knowing about what the government monitors cause then they don't worry about it or feel like they are being watched.

They only watch people who are on a watch-list or if your on a phone and use keywords like "Bomb, President,white-house" that triggers a alert which monitors in the database to see if that's criteria to signal a actual person to investigate your conversation. It works the same way with computers and trying to access sites that would be on the U. S watch-list.

In short: If you're not doing or saying anything that would raise a red-flag to the NSA you have nothing to worry about.

What they do is combine all the files the Federal government keep on all of us. Remember the crazy lady who mailed poison to government officials? When the Feds dumped the files on the PREVIOUS two suspects to the media in an attempt to smear them.

YOU can't see the files they keep on you, or even their contents. The NSA also COLLECTS data on all our communications and stores it in a data base. They claim they cannot access this data without approval from a federal judge, but since it is a secret court we have no way to find out.

Snowden thought we as free citizens deserved to know. Notice how his file was used to smear him. So it turns out the government can't use these secret files against Americans unless they want to.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.