Unfortunately, the majority of the population is uninformed through their own doing. It's much easier to tune out boring technical debates when your beliefs are being challenged.

The majority of the people in the Time Square interviews believed that the information was "not supposed to be leaked", or it was in some way the morally wrong thing to do, without knowing any further information.

While the morality of Snowden's leaks is a flexible topic, it just goes to show that the American people do not actively care about this topic.

I did love the rephrasing in terms of nudes which Oliver and his team did, but it's one step too short of actually producing meaningful change. This type of conversation, again, can be tuned out, it lacks the conviction required to affect more people.

Nonetheless, it was hilarious, I just wanted more from it.

The idea that people are uninformed is a toxic attitude to this whole issue. Threads like these are full of 'sheeple' statements. Counter points or arguments are aggressively down voted and anyone who doesn't share the exact point of view of a poster is tacitley insulted as being uninformed.

A conversation requires both parties to be willing to listen, and it also requires some perception that ideas and concepts are actually up for debate.

That's not going to happen so long as people who claim to think this is important refuse to try and understand any of the broader dynamics of it.

The people in the Times Square interviews (from the linked video) are literally uninformed. It's not an attitude to say so.

Much of the segment is spent illustrating that people do care about the dynamics of the issue, but that they don't understand the details.

They're clearly more misinformed than uninformed. They were making accusations and holding a low opinion of Snowden, not abstaining completely.

This idea that it's not even worth fighting back is extremely toxic.

That is funny, in a way, because that is exactly the behaviour described by Susan Cain in a society that over estimate the value of bold assertion from extrovert character trait. So those misinformed are making statement on their own mental the assumption that conceding their ignorance will make them look weak. At least that is my reading.

Yes, the discussion can and often will turn into an echo chamber of the same argument. I have seen this happen many times as well as been a part of it without realizing.

However, I would like to know what counter points to my comment you are referencing so a more dynamic discussion can be formed.

It's one thing to say that the conversation is one sided and lacking logical diversity, and another to explore counter arguments.

I'm not actually sure that Oliver's premise is correct, that people would be substantially more outraged if they understood their nudes were being seen by the NSA. In fact, we've had this exact debate before re: body scanners in airports. In those cases, people make the connection: while it's obviously preferable to retain that privacy, if the very serious and important trained agents need to do this to stop their plane from blowing up, they're OK with a little bit of exposure.

Really this all turns on the degree to which the individual believes the government usually acts within the interest of the population. If you think the government is a good institution and that they are honestly just interested in national security, you'll accept your "dick pics" becoming collateral damage. If you believe that the government or one of its [former] operatives may use that information against you one day, you won't.