The difference now is two issues: (1) Previously, various official sources have denied this sort of thing was happening. As a specific example, Congress has as

The difference now is two issues: (1) Previously, various official sources have denied this sort of thing was happening. As a specific example, Congress has asked and been told that universal surveillance of US citizens was not occurring, and the plain-text meaning of the law makes universal surveillance of US citizens illegal. (Now we are told that this is contradicted by a secret legal opinion.) (2) Frog boiling. You can argue that at every point along the way the difference from the previous point is not big enough to cause an outcry. But there is a fallacy in this reasoning: at some point the aggregate IS enough to cause an outcry. Right now, there is an outcry among the media (partly exacerbated because these stories about leaks are contemporaneous with cases of prosecuting the media for leaks), perhaps it will spread to politicians and the citizenry.