After having the NSA domestic spying exposed, it's being downplayed by the current regime. Now that it's exposed, they need to justify having it. In order to justify using Xkeyscore and their other tools, they need a large scale terroristic threat. It doesn't even have to be real. It only needs to seem that they took drastic measures because of a "serious" threat. Nothing will happen, hype it in the media and hail the NSA's tools as "saving American lives!"
In order to sell the American public that their spying isn't as extensive as we were told by Snowden, they will have to fail at stopping a threat. Lives will be lost or sacrificed because they just won't be able to gather enough information to stop every threat. Keep your eyes open for another suicide bombing, quite probably by another domestic terrorist that they could not foresee even with the tools at their disposal. Once that happens and Americans are sold that we need the NSA spying on us, we're screwed.
Shortly afterward, there will be lists of domestic American threats. Groups that they can deem as evil. Their harshest critics will be on these lists. Watch for influential people to be caught in scandals. They'll be framed for all sorts of charges, child porn, sabotage, gun charges, etc. Once some of the powerful voices against them are locked up, they will have even more control and fear of retalliation.
There will be demonstrations but they will be dismissed as kooks. There may even be a few attacks by extremists who see this as a takeover of America. That's when they will get serious about disarming citizens. They've already limited ammunition to the point that lots of the weapons will be unusable. It's all part of the plan. So keep doing your job, paying your bills, watching TV and being oblivious to the world around you. That's how the Nazis convinced their entire country to do their bidding, hyping themselves as the greatest country in the world.
Here's another story about more questionable surveillance. Read it all the way through to understand the scope of what's going on.
