A story today indicated that the NSA has surveillance over 100,000 computers world wide including some that aren't even connected to the internet.

This comes on the heels of the Edward Snowden situation where Snowden (whistleblower or traitor?) revealed NSA secrets wreaking havoc on our geopolitical and diplomatic relationships.  Other whislteblowers have generated various levels of fame/infamy with revelations.

Normally one would think that the more the people know the better, but we have government agencies who thrive and prosper in their objectives based upon secrecy.  It's easy to fear the dangers of spying, secrecy and meddling in world affairs, but do we every truly think about the benefits?  Would we have survived and won the cold war without our clandestine operations?  If you don't believe in our covert operations as a nation, is there a price that you wouldn't pay for exposure?  You have to think that most of the spying we do/have done are technically illegal.  If you think we are wrong for doing this, is it unconditional.  If we could have prevented WWII, the holocaust and the 52 million people that died, would that justify our "meddling?"