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He exposed the NSA, not the CIA.

NSA was the one doing the mass surveillance but Im not sure what counter measures were taken.

That’s the neat part, there wasn’t.

The main outcome was the Snowden got branded as a treasonous traitor and fled the country to avoid arrest and is now living in Russia.

There was some public discourse, but hardly anyone truly cared and there wasn’t much political will to change anything.

Counteract the spying or counteract more Snowdens trying to leak classified documents?

The NSA has taken a lot of steps to get ahead of other possible security breaches.

They’re still reading your emails.

Sorry, got the wrong agency's you are right.

So nothing changed. And they are still doing this?

Very little, because the news cycle moved on to the next big clickbait thing and people ceased caring immediately after.

So they have gotten better, and not stopped.

Great!

ultimately? nothing changed, the NSA still does what they do but now they are more tighly controlling their flow of information to avoid further leaks.

they still do the things they have always done: control information.

Yes.

Hi NSA agent reading this.

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Yup. Maybe also the national security courts have more not-yet-public rulings to make it legal-er.

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Is there a way to stop this?

Great.

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BRO WHAT?

Im definitely glad that Snowden exposed what he did, and we have seen some tiny data regulation reforms, like GDPR, which aren't nearly enough yet, but I honestly think Snowden is a bit of a traitor.

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His story is that he had to go to Russia because he was trying to fly to South America and the US canceled his passport, but since he was the one leaking the information and knew it would be published ahead of time, he could have been anywhere in the world when the story broke, and he just happened to be in China and then Russia. Idk pretty split on the guy

But it goes through a filter and are illegally collecting.

Nothing drastic changed, no, is the CIA and/or NSA still harvesting American’s data? Almost certainly.

Gotcha, thank you.

There isn't some guy sitting down at his desk at 9am with a Starbucks pulling up tpb's emails for the last week.

They'll have a list of flagged people they probably do read, everything else is algorithms for key words or phrases.

Neither political party seems particularly interested in dismantling the deep state.

Block him!

Which is also wrong

But they are still obtaining those emails to scan illegally?

I DO NOT GIVE FACEBOOK MY PERMISSION TO USE MY PHOTOS.

Your mail is stored as a plaintext, so everyone that has access to mail providers could read it. Stop using mail systems. Or encrypt your every message with PGP and have the other parties do the same. Both are really cumbersome.

Is being not spied on possible? Yes. Will it exclude you from the society? Yes.

Good and valid point.

Illegally = no due process / a sham of 'due process' = basically

So it isnt illegal, because there is no law.

The right-wing nutjobs that screamed "the government was spying on us and recording our phone conversations" had their worst fears confirmed and ... were totally cool with it, apparently.

The US did basically nothing, but the EU canceled its safe harbor agreement with the US in 2015.

That basically allowed the US to export personal data from the EU, because it was deemed safe. This was needed for Facebook and other services to work smoothly. In 2016 a similar agreement called the Privacy Shield then allowed the export again, but the EU was wary of the US by now and soon canceled the agreement again in 2020 after the CJEU again determined the US to be in breach of it.

Since March 22 we now have the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, but I can assure you that it is very likely that the US still doesn't give a fuck about EU privacy and will soon breach this agreement too. It's basically always the commission allowing the US to export EU data until the courts strike it down again.

So it made exporting personal data and spying on EU citizens a little harder.

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Additionally, https basically became standard instead of the not encrypted http.

Oh... Things changed... Just tighter lockdowns on what could be leaked... Probably some more clearance levels and shit...

But yea... They are still spying on you... Probably even more than what Snowden leaked.

It did get swept away fast with no overthrowing the government.

Perfectly legal under the wonderful patriot act.

In the end, it appears not much in the long run. Glenn Greenwald who was the actual person releasing the information Snowden gave to him says (according to himself) he specifically didn't release a lot of the info as he deemed it was too sensitive. We don't know what he didn't release, only that he says he didn't release some things (again no verification on this, his word only).

The information that was released publicly, really didn't have anything that impactful in it, despite what a news show's host may try to scare you with. It described a lot of US (specifically the NSA's) and others surveillance techniques, however, this was already broadly known within the public and defense/intel community, this was just the first time it was "officially" verifiable and contained a lot more details than they would want disclosed. Since the 80s, most of what was revealed was known publicly in the right circles, and wasn't' at all surprising, again but that doesn't make a good news story! In the end, we don't know the direct impact other than the NSA and others needed to make some changes to their strategies

FYI his stuff was NSA not CIA -- very different things.

wow, good for the EU I guess lol.

Sounds great, my FBI agent sure will be disappointed in me for all my searches over the years.

Your mail is not necessarily stored as plaintext. It depends on where your mail is housed. You can absolutely encrypt email at rest. The hard question is whether everyone you correspond with also encrypts email at rest.

Very little and gaping laws by design yes. While Snowden acted from the right place, he was primarily driven by fear and existential survival

But the data is stored permanently regardless, so if they ever want to look through it they could, and so could anyone the information is accidentally leaked to. Also, algorithms doing the searching is arguably worse because they are pretty primitive and stupid and yet we’re still giving them the authority to implicate you in a terrorist plot.

oof.

Awesome, thank you and yeah I realized it was NSA lol wrong 3 letter agency.

Regarding the NSA? Not much. Regarding everything else? Well, for one, a certain rival nation ostensibly advanced approximately thirty years of naval technology immediately after the releases.

What came of it was the man who exposed the government's illegal activities was forced to flee to Russia. That's it. No one ever answered for, or stopped, the illegal spying on the American public, and Snowden can never return to the US for fear of being arrested. He should be hailed as a hero, but half the country for some absurd reason views him as a traitor.

That is sad for him, I wonder how his life in Russia is right now.

Not as long as the government wants it this way, and they sure as hell are not asking for it to be on a nationwide referendum.

An act that arguably is unconstitutional but few are willing to publicly go after it

He fled to Russia and just got granted citizenship, if I’m not mistaken. He did this to avoid extradition (one country surrendering an individual to another country for crimes) and prosecution in the US where he is still a wanted man for crimes related to his whistleblowing. He’s still a wanted fugitive in the US, so that should be a good example of how much has “changed.”

Well there are literally hundreds of millions of people to actually spy on, and I doubt an agency like the NSA even cares about your run of the mill illegal activity either.

But no. You haven't had right to privacy since 2001

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Sucks he tried to help out and is being treated like this.

Right, I know I am but a insignificant person and not worth watching watching, but it is a sobering thought.

He did out our government agencies for spying on Americans, so that could be seen as traitorous, but he outed spying on Americans, so that was patriotic?

I am on the side that the government should have no right to any of my data without due process (warrants in advance), so I would consider his actions more patriotic than anything, but I totally get why he fears for his safety.

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Sure, my mail can be encrypted in storage. It all depends how much you trust your mail provider.

Note that encrypting uses more CPU than plaintext does, so it costs more money in the long run. Now think from the perspective of a mail provider: "What do they care that their emails are not encrypted if they have no way to verify that?" At some companies (Google for instance) I'm sure they do everything in their might to store the mails securely. But they have to obey every order from the government and yield mails, so that means they store encryption keys which makes it a moot point. Note that even privacy advertised mails like protonmail obey government subpoenas and lie to their users that they don't store the keys while they do.

He exposed the CIA head (Brennon) as lying before congress, and also exposed multiple other lies being told by CIA/FBI/NSA agents before congress, and nothing ever came of it. Remember the next time you see Brennan on TV talking about laws and breaking laws and holding people accountable. The man is a piece of garbage.

It was less about spying on us itezens illegally and more about legally spying on our allies. Both were true, but one caused way more problems. As a result a bunch of things were changed in terms s of how people do things

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Let's not forget, he also confirmed that many US soldiers were killing Iraqi civilians for no reason besides gratuitous violence. It was being brushed under the rug and he exposed it.

And Edward Snowden himself? Also nothing, he ran off to Russia seeking political asylum and I believe he now has citizenship. He's been very quiet since the beginning of the Ukraine invasion bar one quite odd tweet. Edit: seems like he has been tweeting a lot recently actually

Well here is one that might help. The only difference between now and when you were ignorant of it was your own blissful ignorance.

Not to say I condone or necessarily believe the NSA is a lesser evil. But I made peace with the reality of things a long time ago.

What's truly alarming is the pure lack of real reaction from the public when the horrible things that happen behind the scenes get brought to light

I did see that and my cousin who fought in Iraq did not want to believe it but knew better that some people over there go on power trips.

"On June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property,[7] following which the Department of State revoked his passport.[8] Two days later, he flew into Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Russian authorities observed the canceled passport, and he was restricted to the airport terminal for over one month. Russia later granted Snowden the right of asylum with an initial visa for residence for one year, which was subsequently repeatedly extended. In October 2020, he was granted permanent residency in Russia.[9] In September 2022, Snowden was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin.[10]"

"On September 2, 2020, a U.S. federal court ruled in United States v. Moalin that the U.S. intelligence's mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal and possibly unconstitutional.[24]"

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Here's your answer OP ^

All these idiot Redditors not actually knowing the answer and saying whatever they want because... "cynicism is my personality trait"

Inb4 something being illegal and possibly unconstitutional doesn't actually mean anything.

So, I have a bit of insight as I used to associate with some NSA agents.

As of 2021, the NSA is still fully capable of reading emails, accessing webcams, and monitoring cell communications. All without the users consent.

I am willing to bet there access is larger then what I've discovered/been told.

I was aware of it when it first came out, then I had some family problems, saw that EU made decisions and after that I forgot about it like the forgetful person I am. Remembered it every now and then but never saw anything.

Go after it? Both parties loved it, they voted to extend it a couple of times even.

Awesome, thank you! So it still is probably going on but is deemed illegal?

Wow.

They basically just imposed a load of legislation to make it actually legal, provided it was done under certain circumstances, and also by essentially spying on other allied country's people and sharing the information as part of the "Five Eyes". UK passed the "snoopers charter" and the US passed the "patriots act" and all of a sudden its now legal and they don't have to tell you anything about it.

And a lot of them are young . I hate to say it as an excuse but they almost, kinda, don't know any better besides "let's fuckin' kill the enemy" and they don't even know why.

I did wanna say that when the PRISM program was exposed, me and a few of my tech friends did become more privacy/security oriented. (Hence the name haha) And I think in general a lot of folk became more privacy focused.

And that video about van...

Sucks the world we live in. People don't give a fk as long as they are not affected monetarily.

I think for some of the spying they needed to get a warrant from a judge but since it was a secret it was like a sort of secret Court. Those warrants were basically always rubber stamps and the judge said yes something like 99% of the time. I think he's saying that like from now on they will only do it 95% of the time. Maybe.

At least that's my understanding. Too lazy to look it up so I'll wait for somebody to correct me

Carrier pigeons

Fair enough, I respect it.

On one hand, he and wikileaks have exposed some wrongs.

On the other hand, they smugly appointed themselves as the arbiters of right and wrong, and I have a lot of questions concerning their connections to Russia. There's a lot of shades of gray in the world, and they seem to think they have found all the dividing lines.

And the way they were talking made it seem like there wasn't much of an approval or limitation process for these methods.

Its quite literally "I wonder what my X is doing on her computer right now........ lets find out :D"

This isn't entirely true. He was traveling through Russia to South America when his US passport was revoked. He never initially planned to stay in Russia (but yes, has since then become a Russian citizen).

Since then he's been pretty quiet about Russia, sure, but since his life depends on it, it's kind of hard to be all that critical.

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Didn't he shed light on the hacker tools that were developed using US tax payer money?

He was dismissive of the chances of Russia invading Ukraine until they, you know....invaded Ukraine. Then he shut up for a bit.

Now he's back, offering very specific criticisms of Western governments and veryyyyyyy vague criticisms of what might be the Russian government.

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I only pointed it out because it's not a great blanket statement because it gives the impression that there is something inherent about email that means it is stored as plaintext. I fully agree that security is hard, and securing against a government while operating within their jurisdiction is just about impossible, but your email may not be stored in plain text.

Just as an example, ProtonMail offers encrypted email with protection that is good enough right up to the point that a major nation-state takes a very strong interest in you. They're based in Switzerland as a means to make it more difficult to compel access to user data. Nothing is impossible, of course.

To add to what has already been said in this thread, Snowden also revealed the NSA didn’t just spy on US citizens but also spied on other countries, in particular they had very strong surveillance on Brazil, I remember it created some uproar at the time in the country(I am from Brazil), but I don’t know what was done about it. Anyway it’s reasonable to expect that the NSA can have access to your info even if you’re not American.

Basically, the FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) has a classified ruling that spying on American citizens by the NSA was totally legit because...reasons. That you are not allowed to know. That where (and still are) probably not constitutional, but they're going to do it anyway.

Don't think too hard about the fact that your government is spying on you, that nobody has seen the inside of a jail after mass theft of American assets in 2008, that we are engaged is massive spending to foreign governments while US citizens struggle to buy food and gas, etc.

Instead, be very afraid of Jan 6/BLM/Trump/Antifa/whatever. Those are the issues that really matter. /s

Gives, there is no war in Ba Sing Se vibes.

I doubt it. We're never going to see a public facing reprimand of internal organizations within an intelligence agency, because secrecy and compartmentalization of how they work. There were many, many congress representatives that were outraged by the surveillance, people I'd highly doubt that they'd let the surveillance continue.

> Im definitely glad that Snowden exposed what he did, and we have seen some tiny data regulation reforms, like GDPR, which aren't nearly enough yet, but I honestly think Snowden is a bit of a traitor.

Uh, the GDPR is an EU law, and doesn't apply to the US. So at best Europe had data reforms but the US is still doing the same thing as before.

What war?

=)

Its meant more of a turn of phrase than literally. I'm sure he didn't actually run to Russia, but in transit or not, he chose to run from the US authorities and accept political asylum in Russia. I'm sure most would do the same seeing what happened to Assange. Also, I've just read some of his recent tweets and he has somewhat suggested some opposition to the war in a more-obvious-than-id-expect kind of way. Seems like he's in a bad and growingly frustrating position.

He exposed the NSA, not the CIA. In any case, the people here saying that nothing whatsoever was done are making a huge disservice for everyone. By claiming this they are disincentivizing future whistleblowers.

Snowden's leaks led to the USA Freedom Act tightening some laws around using surveillance on American citizens.

The federal court also declared NSA's practices as illegal and possibly unconstitutional.

Snowden's leaks inspired the EU to make their surveillance laws tighter. Similar large scale surveillance is extremely unlikely to occur in any large European country, excluding Russia.

NSA was also required to delete a lot of the data they had gathered. Also, some of the data they gathered after that was made illegal to gather by them and they had to delete that later too.

Many of course hoped even more to come from Snowden's leaks, but honestly, the end result was a net positive. More whistleblowers like him need to come forward and we should encourage that by recognizing the good that came from Snowden's leaks.

We are safe here.

To stop yourself from being monitored? Unless you're planning to drop out of society and live in the woods, no.

Honestly would be nice.

Nothing much. He expanded on what previous whistlesblowers talked about in early 2000s.

It’s more about the NSA. Can look into Projects Minaret and Shamrock. 1945-73 was a time of surveillance of US citizens.

A Review of Intelligence Oversight Failure: NSA Programs that Affected Americans

Plus this documentary about William Binney and his crew at NSA. They were the people who helped to create some of the systems Snowden talked about.

Good American. On you tube but May need a VPN

https://youtu.be/666wsDcoNrU

Otherwise look up projects Trailblazer, Thinthread and Solar winds.

Also look up Senator Church committee from 1975.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/looking-back-at-the-church-committee

Then CIA/media relationship. This is the start of the rabbit hole journey:)

So you’ll find Things he explained have been going on before he was even born. All that’s changed is the technology.

The way he was treated it isnt very encouraging.

Next time I am up at 2 am I will check this out, I saved it.

> And a lot of them are young . I hate to say it as an excuse but they almost, kinda, don't know any better besides "let's fuckin' kill the enemy" and they don't even know why.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the film "The Card Counter."

I don't believe I am relevant enough to matter to them, if I was, I probably would already know. I am not an activist in any way. All I want is for the US government to go back to when they were able find a middle ground to actually help society. I don't think that can be considered radical.

Same here, I do not matter like that but want theme to do more good than harm.

No, it isn't, and it is a risk that major whistleblowers have to take.

In my opinion it's a shame that Russia was the logical safe target for Snowden instead of some other European country, who should have had his back given that it was unlikely that he would get a fair and just judicial treatment in USA. That is grounds for asylum. I'm irked at my own country not giving him an asylum when he applied for it.

Also a shame that USA still hasn't pardoned him. Some politicians and a few judges have suggested it, but seems to be too touchy for the clear majority of American decision-makers.

Now hes at ground 0 with Russia and Ukraine cause he tried to do the right thing.

Sometimes that happens when you try to do the right thing. Still, the world at large is a better place for all the individual people doing the right thing even when it means personal harm to themselves.

That said, at the moment far as I know Snowden is relatively safe, and there's still time for Biden or some high-enough court to pardon him.

Putin granted him citizenship last month apparently. Beyond that we don't know.

His oath was to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

The NSA was (and is) violating the Constitution, and what he released exposed that. That makes the NSA an enemy of the Constitution, and this means that Snowden was fulfilling his oath.

Is he a criminal? Possibly. He broke the law, and violated the regulations of his employment.

Is he a traitor? No. He was fulfilling the conditions of his oath.

Daniel Ellsberg was in exactly the same position. History has vindicated what he did when he released the Pentagon Papers, but at the time the same charges were leveled against him. I saw him in a talk not long after the Snowden revelations, and these are the points that Ellsberg made.

What happened to all the leaked classified intel? I don't know the post was removed . Hope I answered your question

Yes, I believe so, thank you.

I thought it was Hayden that was caught lying before congress?

I agree it was the right thing to do to expose the leaks, I just don’t buy that he didn’t want to go to Russia or China in the first place. Also at this point he’s basically helping the kremlin, tweeting all day about how evil the US is while not saying a peep about what’s going on over there.

Obviously he’s probably not free to say what he thinks, but still I don’t buy his story that he just HAD to go to Russia and nowhere else. A lot of places don’t have extradition to the US and aren’t autocratic mafia states with no civil rights

True but imo the main problem is we haven’t figured out proper legal structures for data rights, and I think GDPR is positive step. Plus it inspired the California law which I also consider a positive, albeit tiny, step forward