Before five years about o edward Snowden διέθεσε στους δημοσιογράφους μια μίνι βάση data που περιείχε γύρω στα δέκα χιλιάδες άκρως διαβαθμισμένα έγγραφα. Τα top secret contents revealed the scope and scale of mass surveillance by the US government and its allies.
So the world first learned that the NSA outside the massive collection of phone metadata by millions of Americans had installed backdoors in internet cables, constantly developed hacking tools, and was trying to break any encryption we use to ensure of our data.
Then, Silicon Valley was also accused of deliberately participating in the program PRISM data collection. And the revelations from Edward Snowden didn't stop.
The journalists published incredible stories that highlighted government abuse and immoral invasions, which, according to Snowden, were the smallest of the NSA database in Hawaii.
Five years later, no appreciable progress appears to have been made. In addition to a law that does not reduce the amount of domestic collection of phone records from Americans, the government continues to conduct surveillance on foreigners (and Americans) under the same legal framework that existed before the leaks, after US lawmakers reinstated the most of the government's powers to surveillance with almost no debate. We are again at the point where a catch-all executive order gives the US government unlimited powers to data collection.
As for the technological ones Companies of Silicon Valley, who wanted to regain the trust of their users after the publication of the leaks, it could be said that not much has changed on an overall level…
Of course not to be unfair, some things have changed for the better. Today, we have end-to-end encryption on almost all of our devices.
After the revelation that the NSA had reached the private fiber optic cables joining Yahoo and Google's data centers, companies began to encrypt everything. Even companies that did not report this leak, such as Microsoft, have begun to encrypt their cables in a bid to close the doors on spies.
Encryption forced the NSA and its allies to hit the front doors of the companies by holding warrants instead of trying to install backdoors.
Google, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo have started publishing transparency reports stating how many data handed over to the secret services. Today transparency reports have been adopted by almost all companies and although they are not perfect, they offer an idea in the foreground of the legal requirements that target user data.
Of course, what hasn't changed at all is the way private industry manages their users' data. The companies technology they continue to collect data very aggressively to serve ads and serve third-party interests. Many companies are largely unregulated since they are only marginally regulated by law, which gives them unlimited space to manage our personal data.
The private espionage, the data collection, profiling of voters and product buyers is paying off, and lawmakers have so far not reacted.
From all of the above we can say that the leaks of Edward Snowden did not save us but caused a cultural shift. We are trying to control our personal information more. Leaks were also the catalyst that technology companies needed to add more encryption.
However, say irony (or capitalism), even if technology companies have tried to cut off the secret services from our data, they continue to collect them with undiminished interest. So the next showdown will probably be with Silicon Valley.
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