Direct perceivable damage? Is there even a question?
Did the NSA over stepped it's bounds sure, but did anyone actually got directly hurt? Well not really.
The NSA is only as "bad" as the rest of the government, it's not a rogue agency that whisks people in the middle of the night to re-education camps, if the US ever becomes such state then encryption isn't going to help you.
This isn't an argument against encryption, or in favor of the NSA violating the privacy of US citizens (I am not a US citizen and I do not expect the NSA to care for my privacy) it's just an argument that people should put things in perspective.
East Germany didn't became a police state because of the Stasi, they've created the Stasi to enforce it. The US wasn't turned into a police state because of McCarthy-nism, it wouldn't turn into one because of the NSA even if they continue to violate the rights of US citizens unless there will be a major major political shift across all branches of the US government and it's population.
