I think it's more likely that most everyone the NSA would be interested in snooping on is aware they're snooping and has changed how they communicate and moved to encryption.
The signal to noise ratio has to be completely ridiculous, to the point that it's no longer a justifiable effort.
Intimidation and coercion are powerful motivators. The Innocence Project found 25% of people proven innocent, by DNA evidence, actually provided confessions or self-incriminating statements.
I worry about what other behind-the-door tactics are used. Some might even be official abuses of power, such as gag orders, which are already being used for what the WSJ called "political persecutions in Wisconsin,"(1) it wouldn't surprise me.
Get an average person into a room, interrogate for hour or days,if necessary, and ultimately, the vast majority would confess to anything just for the sake of ending it. There are many tricks in a hat to do so+ decades of experience within police and other institutions.
For some reason, it’s often the people who should shut up the most who just can’t shut up. The ability to stop yourself from talking is an underrated skill.
I think you misunderstand. Him not shutting up is probably how he got the job in the first place - the media gave him so much more attention than anybody else.
I think you're talking about a different class of problems, though. The NSA is going to be focused on larger, sophisticated groups; Chinese government intrusions, multi-state-sponsored terrorism, coordinated Russian attempts to influence U.S. elections. Not the type of thing that's going to get caught in a police interview.
Of course there are some sophisticated adversaries who were probably too smart to use phones even before Snowden, but I’ll venture a guess that the typical terrorism conspiracy is closer in sophistication to a street gang than to the KGB. At least, if there were a clear link between a terrorist plot and and institution full of taxpayer-funded career spooks, it would not be terrorism, just war.
The signal to noise ratio has to be completely ridiculous, to the point that it's no longer a justifiable effort.