It is really a question of which group is most naive. Is the threat from terrorism larger than the threat of un-patched vulnerabilities in vital software. At the moment the response to these "issues" is mutually exclusive. Only time will tell.
The NSA doesn't create vulnerabilities in software. (If you think they do, you can argue equally persuasively for the NSA's role in hiding aliens at Area 51).
The strongest argument you can make about NSA's malign role in software security is that, by buying vulnerabilities from people who would otherwise sell them to vendors, NSA is retarding third-party security research and slowing the mean time to discovery for new vulnerabilities.
I'm disquieted by that notion too (it's been a little while since I found the kind of vulnerability that sells for real money --- those are very particular kinds of flaws, contrary to popular opinion --- but I've had a "no selling vulnerabilities" rule for a long time). But I'm not naive. Most of the people who would sell vulnerabilities to NSA probably weren't in a hurry to share them with vendors anyways. And part of the reason for that is, vendors feel entitled to security research about their products, even though they refuse to pay for it. They were outbid even before NSA came along.
Not the kind of vulnerability I inferred the parent commenter to be referring to, or the kind considered by the reaction to the President's NSA committee and new NSA guidelines. I agree, BULLRUN is one of the very significant and important disclosures; probably the most important.
Ah the "terrorism" card. Remember that its been shown found a number of times (including by the president's own 'show' committee) that the operations in question were not important facets in discovering or preventing any terrorist plots.
It also stands to reason that most of the 'terrorists' (People the FBI setup not withstanding) were aware of the faceless wiretapping and ability of the govt to get data from google/yahoo/att/etc in the first place. Given that there were stories about such things (to a limited extent) since around 2006.
That's a doubly false dichotomy. Terrorism is a threat, yes, but the NSA spying isn't preventing terrorism and making us safer. On the other hand, most people (AFAIK) are not concerned by NSA or somebody else exploiting un-patched vulnerabilities, but by NSA and the US government monitoring and controlling free speech and the resulting chilling effect this has.
