Me neither. I always suspected that of Obama.

I get tired of all this. I wonder if people really thought that communication was NEVER captured.
Even if you are in America, with 100% freedom and all, you are being watched on public places, on big events, anywhere where lots of people meet. The internet is very similar to that and being watched. "Watched" is the keyword here, it's not like the NSA (and whoever else is involved) has 1 billion workers who watch all the other people on earth. The few "agents" can't follow all your steps, it's impossible. It's just programs running and scanning and throwing an alert when something dodgy is going on, like your PC throws a popup when something bad happens.
To me it was always clear that communication that is done with technical support CAN be watched (and therefore is most likely watched because it's humans after all, they do what they can do) and even if it might limit my freedom and change my behavior when using tech, there are still ways of communication that are really free and not watched ;) unless you are at a public place or some big event, like I mentioned, where you might be watched for "security purposes" but then again, don't you want to be safe in a stadium, on a plane, at a speech, ...? There are always people who want to harm others and all the security stuff then secures your freedom and integrity by limiting everybody's freedom by a bit.

someone should use that to play a prank.

Dont tell anyone anything directly, but swap dodgy messages between two phones and see what happens =P

Bet you wouldnt even be able to board a plane without interrogation.