A community conversation about how stuff's changed over the past 5 years since Snowden's NSA doc release.
June 2018 marks the 5th anniversary of the publication of details of the NSA's bulk phone data collection program by the Guardian and the beginning of the much broader exposure of NSA surveillance operations worldwide. I'm putting together a retrospective not about the leaks themselves, but what's happened since--how did the Snowden files change our lives, Internet security and privacy, and the world at large? Have things changed for the better, for the worse, or is it a wash? Specifically, I'm asking:
*What positive changes resulted from the Snowden files, including PRISM, Section 215, and the details of NSA Internet data monitoring?
*What negative consequences have resulted from the Snowden leak, in terms of blowback on privacy and security?
*Do American citizens have more or less digital privacy 5 years later?
*What has the impact of the leaks been on US national security and diplomacy?
*Did the Snowden leaks have a lasting impact on how the US government is viewed by citizens and by people around the world, and how has it shaped US policy and politics? How does this color the regulatory environment for technology?
Please share your thoughts with me on these topics as "issues" on this document, or by email at sean [dot] gallagher [at] arstechnica [dot] com. (Or, if you'd rather not have your email in my corporate system, send to thepacketrat [at] protonmail [dot] com. I'll fold all the comments that I receive into the master document, which I'll keep public.