"Follow the money", what does it mean for us?

Question

With revelations that came out in a German newspaper from leaks that  Edward Snowden released, the US, through the NSA, have been checking on online payments.

As Zimbabwe, we should be excited, as we have not been allowed to make a lot of payments online due to us being under sanctions.

Should we be celebrating that we were kept from making payments and now have a bit of privacy? How safe are we now?

Here's a report here on Mashable:
http://mashable.com/2013/09/15/nsa-follow-the-money-credit-card-transactions/

Answer 1

Well at times privacy does not pay the bills. Say you wanna run an adsense campaign and your credit card is rejected how will knowing that you are still not being tracked console you whilst watching your website getting zero traffick.

Besides, if you are not into crime it doesnt really matter. You dont want to buy nukes online do you?