What's The Concern?

A lot of people have been up in "arms" with the NSA spying. First that's what they do. That's why they are. My problem with them is that if they were so good, why have they been caught doing what they do. I grew up during the "Cold War". In 1960 when I joined the Navy in boot camp we were drilled into our heads the threat of the Soviet Union (now Russia). Loose lips sink ships. Our intelligence was obsessed with counter intelligence. We had in the Navy ECM (electronic counter measure). We were always snooping on them and they were snooping on us. While serving on the JFK CVA-67 in the Mediterranean Sea for 9 months in 1969, Soviet trawlers would shadow us every where. They had a lot of their "state of the art" snooping radars etc. just trying to get something.
In 1970-1973 while stationed at NavComUnit London, England (it no longer exist) the Soviets had a "bureau" across the alley from our building. They were always pinging us. The only way that secure communications came and went from our building other than landlines was via microwave transmissions. Even the transmitters and receivers had a punch card that was installed by one of our resident ET's (Electronic Technicians). These changes were made in coordination with other sites that at the same time at each place every day. (Remember punch cards?) Now we have 128-256 SSL layering. We had a room that was like a bank vault, like a bank vault it had one entrance and/or exit. You had to enter a "air lock" where you had to secure the outer door before the inner door could be operated. All lines (each wire) entering this room had a capacitor attached to shunt any stray RF to ground.
I was just one part of this organization. I have other friends today who were there and although I had a TS I couldn't access anything that I didn't have a "need to know".
Times have changed. Our archaic way of doing thing then was easy to police security. There was always a tickle file to track whose eye have seen something. Most correspondences were on paper. Many were destroyed. We had our own incinerator.
Now most everything is digitized saved to hard drives in processors. For a while I know service people have had the capability of saving information to a jump drive etc.
Information can be emailed, texted or transmitted wirelessly at random. Seems like it takes a breach in order to correct a security problem.
I am all for our 4TH Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizures where a search warrant is issued by a judge only after there is good suspicion. However I believe with the conditions of the world, the changing technology I can't reconcile how the NSA can operate without having the leave way to gather intelligence randomly without pinging my usage of my smart phone and internet. I know the constitution is suppose to protect us from unlawful search and my concern is can I trust my government to just use the chatter to seek out the bad guys. I don't see any other way that they can protect us without having that ability. Until someone comes up with a better way I will accept a blanket surveillance.
As a technician I was tasked to installing tape recorders to 4 wire unsecure DOD phone lines randomly to see what "chatter" that could compromise our mission.