That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US. I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change. Privacy still isn't an issue that's on most people's radar. The government still does what it did before and likely a lot more. I have a ton of respect for Snowden, but he severely overestimated how much Americans care about privacy, spying, surveillance, or anything like that they mostly can't even understand.
>That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US.
At the very least it produced some dissonance between democratic establishment and their support base. Bill and Hilary continue to tour the country and I attended their road show in Seattle. Crowed cheered at every statement until they got to, and I quote, “Snowden is a traitor”, which produced very confused and subdued cheer. It was very fun to watch.
Yup. Even the dark fiber back haul networks used by data centers that were once thought to be private are now being encrypted (Google, Microsoft, etc have mentioned this).
This is exactly what PRISM was, not taking data from servers, but tapping into the data networks between them and siphoning off whatever the NSA wanted. And it just so happens that to mirror a fiber optic line you use a crystal prism.
> Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US.
It actually changed a lot how some companies handle government requests for data. Apple for example, completely switched their strategy because they wanted to be seen as protective of customer data. They realized that data requests would eventually leak so they avoid storing identifiable data on the servers. They saw privacy as a competitive advantage.
It's one for the history books. We can't say we weren't warned. To many of the public bemoan the state of things while ignoring the events that lead up to the current state.
