It’s weirdly vindicating. Because the premise of the show was that the system had to be secret because there would be “such an outcry” if people ever found out.
Then the Snowden revelations came out and there was nothing but a huge collective shrug.
Now, we get the outcry. Better late than never.
Maybe the difference is that Snowden still felt abstract to a lot of people. Flock makes it tangible: cameras in your own neighborhood, your movements mapped, your associations inferred. Person of Interest imagined the outcry coming from discovering the Machine;