but tracking peoples every movements via phone and every single detail on their online personas is an incredible breach of privacy and civil liberties.

I've argued with people about that. They typically say they have nothing to hide so they couldn't care less that the government was watching them. And then there are people inside programming circles who say this is just an inevitable part of the information age, and all governments do it, and we should simply learn to live with it.

On the other hand, there's an old man at my gym who on more than one occasion has told me that Obama and the Democrats are going to lead the US into some kind of Stalinist new world order (just wait and see.) This isn't even on many people's radar yet.

Then it needs to become an issue that Americans care about by the people who do understand how terrible the actions of the NSA are (in this case, most HN readers)

I agree with you entirely. It's a good fight to fight but.. I think it's going to take time before it stops becoming a 'fringe' issue for most Americans.