We have to accept secret services know what we write, read, say, and most of 'us' tell them voluntarily, e.g. via Facebook, the cloud, whatever.
Metadata are more treacherus than real mails, because anyone can be found by certain behaviour which he will conduct again and again, even under different names or behind a proxy.
I just cannot point at the event in time, when such things like eavesdropping by the state against
all citizens were suddenly "accepted" and "legal", after they were
not, for centuries. There was a creeping background-changing of laws, and made-up reasons.
With this scale of eavesdropping, any freedom (also the praised american one) is a joke, and compromised.
Maybe the people should become active, and fight back. There are means, it is the problem the make them popular, and known.