The leak was an attempt to bolster the libertarian brand.

[JDPriestly]

191. The surveillance program has been shown to be useless at this point

when it comes to deterring terrorism. Terrorists are not giving themselves away in electronic communications. That should be clear to everyone from the Boston bombing.

The terrorists probably figured out long ago that their electronic communications were not secure. They would have figured it out because of the targeting of the drones and the fact that we could find them as easily as we have.

It's the rest of us who suffer from this surveillance program. A sitting president can eavesdrop on the candidates for office running against his slate of candidates and not only on the candidate but on the candidates' aides and friends and supporters. If the electronic communications of the press, and we are talking just about the metadata, are being watched and correlated, then the press is not fee to investigate stories without betraying their sources. That ends the freedom of the press.

This is an entirely different question than those posed by the Second Amendment although those are difficult enough.