It sounds like you missed the show, because I don't know how anyone who watched it realtime could forget the comical cycle of Greenwald releasing enough to draw

It sounds like you missed the show, because I don't know how anyone who watched it realtime could forget the comical cycle of Greenwald releasing enough to draw out Clapper for a denial, followed by another release proving Clapper a liar. This happened repeatedly, it was amazing how long it took for the USG to realize that their only option was to STFU, because they certainly were not going to stop doing what they wanted. I'm genuinely curious about how you came to the understanding that only meta-data was collected. The majority of my time is spent wading through bitrot and cataloging manipulated news stories, so I've seen a lot of concerted effort in rewriting history - but nothing on the scale of memoryholing Snowden's whistleblowing. Because the original lie was the meta-data misinformation you just unknowingly parroted, followed by a laughably stupid analogy wherein the NSA is running a public library and we are all books... with every revelation the analogy got more twisted. The moment they jumped the shark, signalling peak entertainment, was the director of the NSA showing up at Defcon in a black tshirt and jeans - trying to behave as if it wasn't the most cringe inducing "hello fellow kids" ever.