Thanks for pointing out "ambiguous". I believe it is very important to look at the situation and social pressures in addition to personal character.
I also believe you are to significant extent wrong about the people at NSA believing they're doing good, however.
Bill Binney, Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake all have personal experience with the matter, and here's what they had to say about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs&t=1h37m59s
I would add that I think much of the material Ed Snowden released, to the extent that it shows personal expressions, to me points more to these people viewing the Intelligence organization as the new "we", and /everybody/ outside, US citizen or not, as a bit less than fully human.
That cheeky smiley on the sketches detailing how they broke Google's SSL?
"TOR Stinks" and similar flippant expressions in the documents about attacking the integrity of TOR?
And so on.
To me that isn't the look of someone who thinks they're making difficult, serious choices to protect the greater good. It's the look of someone who thinks they're better than everyone else out there and they can do whatever they want, including having "a little fun" toying with those other inferior creatures, because they think no one can touch them.
That, I think, is the general mindset we're dealing with. Allow for a fair deal of individual variation of course.
I would add that I think much of the material Ed Snowden released, to the extent that it shows personal expressions, to me points more to these people viewing the Intelligence organization as the new "we", and /everybody/ outside, US citizen or not, as a bit less than fully human. That cheeky smiley on the sketches detailing how they broke Google's SSL? "TOR Stinks" and similar flippant expressions in the documents about attacking the integrity of TOR? And so on. To me that isn't the look of someone who thinks they're making difficult, serious choices to protect the greater good. It's the look of someone who thinks they're better than everyone else out there and they can do whatever they want, including having "a little fun" toying with those other inferior creatures, because they think no one can touch them. That, I think, is the general mindset we're dealing with. Allow for a fair deal of individual variation of course.