Oh, I absolutely agree that there were terrible actions committed by the US during the Cold War in the name of defeating Communism, and that they should be criticized. Just not that these actions made the two sides anywhere close to equivalent, which I (maybe incorrectly) interpreted you as making the argument for.
But to get back to the actual topic of the NSA today, I think the lack of credible external threats to the US (at least of the type that can be actually be handled by signal intelligence) combined with the illegal mission creep to domestic surveillance makes it very hard for anyone to actually feel proud about working there in the way they could during the Cold War or in previous codebreaking organizations during WWII.
