Candidate Obama used it as a differentiator of himself. Here is a video of him in 2007 talking about how the tapping of US Citizens is bad and about the preservation of constitutional rights to privacy.
The impresion I have is that Obama "was convinced" to go along with these programs after elected. He might have truly believed the system was not abusive, or if he didn't he would be risking creating enemies inside his government, or both. The problem is, no matter how much non-abusive such a system might be today/yesterday, it will/would derail into abuse in the future (1 year, 5 years, 10 years time, who knows). There's no way people with this kind of power would always "be responsible".
Yeah, I'm with you on this phree. Obama actively campaigned to protect our civil liberties and once in office completely ignored them. He's a liar. Wolf in sheep's clothing.