I would agree that Baidu is not any better than Google and probably much worse, but the thing is, China is not pretending to be something that is not, they are not pretending to be a democracy or a champion of internet freedoms, human rights, etc. What they are is very clear cut and out in the open. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that China is the king of internet censorship and control.
The United States on the other hand, portraits itself as a role model of democracy and a champion of freedom of speech, human rights, liberties, etc, etc. The United States even publishes annual reports where it ranks other countries in terms of how well they do in those categories, so when such a country portraits itself in such a way and judges others, the bar for such country is indeed very high and when it turns out that Americans have been lied, spied and deceived big time by their own government in what has been already established that was illegal under US law, well, its very easy to see why so many people are disappointed.
What has been discovered about the NSA its just the tip of the iceberg anyway and was only found because of accidents like Snowden and Wikileaks. There is a lot more that can be said in terms of such country not following what it preaches to others.
Americans have a right to know how their data is used and have a right to exercise their rights and freedoms as provided by the US constitution. Again, the bar for USA is quite different than for China for the reasons already mentioned.