Intelligence officials attempted to smooth ruffled feathers over sweeping US spy programs Tuesday in a major House briefing, claiming that the government’s extensive collection of phone and Internet records is needed for protecting the homeland. Privacy rights, they argued, were never threatened by the NSA’s activities.

The American Civil Liberties Union is among the many organizations and individuals who just aren’t buying what the administration is selling. As a Verizon customer, the group and its New York chapter filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration this week, demanding that the controversial program be ended and its records purged. Says ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer:

This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens. It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation. The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy.

The clean-up crew of FBI, NSA, and intelligence officials who briefed the entire House and played defense for the administration Tuesday was only the latest attempt to soothe outrage over security policies that track the communication activities of billions of citizens. Across the Atlantic, the European Parliament debated the spy programs on the same day, especially whether or not they violated local privacy protections. EU officials in Brussels also vowed to seek answers from US diplomats later this week at a ministerial meeting in Dublin.

Meanwhile, the whistle-blower who brought this mess into the limelight is nowhere to be found. As the Justice Department works with the FBI to find and prosecute Edward Snowden, the fugitive Booz Allen contractor whose identity was revealed Sunday, a bipartisan swath of lawmakers are calling for a court to hand down the charge of treason.

Law enforcement officials say that, although they are in the process of building a case against Snowden, they do not yet know what charges will be drawn against him. Only one American- al-Qaida propaganda chief Adam Gadahn-has been charged with treason since WWII.