I think this speaks to the fact that post-Snowden, the game has entered a new stage.
Pre-Snowden the NSA or whoever would not have been willing to do such a thing, due to the very high likelyhood of detection. Yes, 99.9% of people aren't going to notice their phone doing something unexpected. But if you apply it to everyone because you want the ability to grep their communications for keywords a.k.a. selectors then you need all of it, all the time. There are over a billion Android activations now. Even 0.01% of users being tech savvy and using custom/modified ROMs or analyzing their phone more carefully would notice what's up, and then their secrecy (the most prized asset) is blown. Secrecy is a double edged sword, it protects them but also limits them. So - not feasible.
Unfortunately, post-Snowden, the intelligence agencies know two things. Firstly, their secrecy is blown. Everyone knows they spy on every person alive, all the time. Most of their secrets are now ex-secrets. There's nothing to defend anymore there. The second thing they know is that it seems people don't give a shit. There were no protests in the streets. There were no diplomatic repercussions. It went in front of Congress and got voted down. The UK didn't even get to have a vote, the government just went full Orwell and other than some angry newspaper columns jack shit happened. Time to invade Syria? Parliamentary recall. Journalists have their materials seized? Stay on vacation. Generally they learned, totalitarian surveillance ranks lower in the priority stack than whether to invade Syria or not.
The combination of these two things means they're going to get really aggressive now. Automatically MITM every SSL connection using a FISAd CA? Unthinkable before, too easily detected. Post-Snowden, why not, it's just another way to do what people already know about. Force Google to back door every Android? Why not! They already track peoples movements everywhere, including people who switch phones to try and avoid detection. They apparently have the ability to turn phones into bugs, even if they appear to be switched off. Automatic, global backdooring of every mobile device wouldn't surprise people.
In short I think we may have lost as much as we gained from Snowden's leaks. Sure, the veil of secrecy was torn down. But society failed to rise up. The secret police have won. Now they can do anything without fear, and there's literally nothing to stop them.
