OK, so there is no such thing as a completely anonymous crypto coin. I get it. Also, like most people, I accept that if the US govt. really wants to find out what I am up to financially or otherwise, they will be able to do this. Call me a traitor to the crypto movement, but I really don't give a rat's ass about the NSA, wikileaks, Snowden, etc. If the state really wants to come down on our freedoms, it will, sorry. That said, would one of you crypto nerds please answer the following question: If I become stinking rich buying XMR at current prices and decide to retire down in good old Mexico in two years (or less - more likely) with chicas and tequila, will the anonymity it does provide at least protect me from Mexican gangsters? If you can assure me that it will, then of course I'm in.
Cryptonote does provide the promise of real anonymity. Its just a question of how high of a mixin count does the software force on everyone. Also you have to do some other things like smart ring signature matching and an alternative to payment ID's. If we do all of this and force a mixin count of something like 6 on everyone than transactions would be quite expensive, however no one, not even the nsa, could ever figure out what the heck was going on inside of our network. If you just want to protect against blanket spying but not targeted spying against specific individuals than everyone using a mixin count of 2 or 3 would probably be plenty. So its a trade off, true anonymity is possible just expensive. As for gangsters in mexico, no problem, the software in its current form could probably protect you from that.
Any mixin greater than zero is enough to provide plausible deniability in the block chain, though larger mixins provide additional security by cripling the ability to rule out other parties as possible transactors.
