Half of what gives NSA their outsized power is that they hold all the information cards. They can threaten to release info (but not if it's already in the public domain) and they can even lie about what's in there (but not if it's in the public domain). Of course there are exceptions: information that truly would put national security at risk, trade secrets, medical records, a few other things.
Still, I'd try real hard to roll surveillance back before being resigned that it can't be rolled back. There's lots of stuff in there that no one, government or private, has any right to know. Folks do have a right to secrets. You cannot destroy the technology, in the sense that once someone has figured out how to do it it can be done again. But you can take that technology off of government computers and pass a law against government computers having it.
What we really need is a better check on government and its surveillance powers -- in other words, loyalty to the Fourth Amendment. What it comes down to is more power to the people and less to government.
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