TL;DR: In June 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting virtually all Americans' phone records, tapping the backbone of the internet, and compelling tech companies to provide access to user data. A decade later: the bulk phone program is dead, the web is mostly encrypted, and a federal court ruled the surveillance was illegal. But in 2024, Congress expanded Section 702 surveillance powers. The FBI still runs millions of warrantless searches on Americans annually. Snowden remains in Russia with citizenship, facing espionage charges if he returns. The surveillance state didn't collapse. It adapted.
What Snowden Revealed
Before June 2013, suggesting that the U.S. government was collecting all Americans' phone records would get you labeled a conspiracy theorist. After June 2013, it was an established fact confirmed by the government itself.
Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii, leaked thousands of classified documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The revelations included:
Domestic Surveillance
- Bulk phone metadata collection: Under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the NSA collected records of virtually every phone call made in the United States, who called whom, when, for how long. Not content, but everything else.
- PRISM: A program compelling nine major tech companies (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, and others) to provide direct access to user data, including emails, chats, and stored files.
- Upstream collection: The NSA was tapping the fiber optic cables that carry internet traffic, collecting communications as they flowed through AT&T's facilities. Room 641A in San Francisco became infamous.
Global Surveillance
- XKeyscore: Described as "the NSA's Google," this system allowed analysts to search virtually anything anyone did on the internet, emails, browsing history, social media activity, with no prior authorization.
- MUSCULAR: The NSA was intercepting data flowing between Google and Yahoo data centers, collecting hundreds of millions of user accounts, even when the companies thought their internal traffic was secure.
- Allied surveillance: The NSA was tapping the phones of allied leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The "Five Eyes" alliance shared surveillance data with the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The scale was unprecedented. The NSA wasn't just targeting suspects. It was collecting everything, from everyone, just in case.
The Lies That Came Before
What made the revelations explosive wasn't just the surveillance itself, it was that officials had lied about it.
Three months before Snowden went public, Senator Ron Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper a direct question during a public hearing: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
Clapper's response: "No, sir... not wittingly."
This was false. Clapper knew it was false when he said it. He later called it the "least untruthful" answer he could give in a public setting.
In September 2020, a federal appeals court ruled that the bulk phone collection program was illegal and that the intelligence officials who publicly defended it "were not telling the truth." The ruling came seven years after Snowden's revelations, vindicating what he had exposed.
No one was prosecuted for lying to Congress. Clapper resigned in 2017 and is now a CNN analyst.
What Actually Changed
The Snowden revelations triggered real reforms. Some programs ended. Others were curtailed. But the surveillance apparatus survived, and in some ways, grew.
Programs That Ended
| Program | What Happened |
|---|---|
| Bulk phone metadata (Section 215) | Ended by USA Freedom Act (2015). NSA had to query phone companies instead of storing all records. The program was suspended in 2018 due to compliance failures and Section 215 expired in 2020. |
| "About" collection | Paused in 2017. This program collected communications that merely mentioned surveillance targets, not just those to or from them. |
| Leader surveillance | Obama administration ordered NSA to stop monitoring allied leaders (though this was policy, not law). |
Programs That Continue
| Program | Current Status |
|---|---|
| PRISM / Section 702 | Still active. Reauthorized and expanded in April 2024. Now compels a wider range of businesses to assist surveillance. |
| XKeyscore | Still operational under Executive Order 12333, which governs foreign intelligence and has no meaningful congressional oversight. |
| Upstream collection | Continues under Section 702. The NSA still taps internet backbone infrastructure. |
| FBI backdoor searches | Over 3 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data annually using Americans' identifiers. Congress failed to add a warrant requirement in 2024. |
The 2024 Expansion
In April 2024, Congress didn't just reauthorize Section 702, it expanded the program's reach. The ACLU called it "the largest expansion of domestic government surveillance since the Patriot Act."
The key change: a dramatically expanded definition of "electronic communications service provider." Under the new law, the government can compel not just telecom companies but data centers, landlords, and essentially anyone with access to communications equipment to assist with surveillance.
Senator Ron Wyden called it "one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history."
A warrant requirement amendment failed by a single vote in the House: 212-212.
The Encryption Revolution
If the surveillance state won the legislative battles, it lost something arguably more important: the technology war.
Before Snowden, HTTPS was rare. Most websites transmitted data in plaintext. Email between servers was unencrypted. Messaging apps offered no end-to-end encryption.
After Snowden, everything changed:
- Let's Encrypt: Launched in 2016, providing free TLS certificates. HTTPS went from about 30% of web traffic to over 95%.
- Signal Protocol: Developed in 2013, now powers encryption for WhatsApp (2 billion users), Signal, and others. When WhatsApp deployed it in 2016, it was called "the largest deployment of end-to-end encryption in history."
- Apple encryption: iOS 8 (2014) encrypted all device data by default. Apple explicitly cited user privacy as the reason.
- Email encryption: Gmail, Yahoo, and other providers encrypted server-to-server email traffic after learning the NSA was intercepting it.
Security researcher Bruce Schneier wrote: "One of the biggest and best legacies of his efforts is that we actually encrypted the web."
This wasn't reform. It was an arms race. The tech industry, embarrassed by its complicity in PRISM, responded by making mass surveillance technically harder.
Global Fallout
The Snowden revelations had consequences far beyond U.S. borders:
European Data Protection
Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems used the revelations to challenge EU-U.S. data transfers. The result:
- Schrems I (2015): EU Court of Justice invalidated Safe Harbor, the framework governing transatlantic data flows.
- Schrems II (2020): Privacy Shield, Safe Harbor's replacement, also struck down.
- Meta fine (2023): €1.2 billion, the largest GDPR fine ever, explicitly citing the Snowden revelations as foundational to the ruling.
Tech Industry Exodus
Non-U.S. companies and governments began avoiding American cloud providers. Brazil announced plans for undersea cables to Europe that would bypass the United States. Germany considered building a "Schengen cloud" with European-only data routing.
One industry estimate suggested U.S. cloud providers lost $35-180 billion in business due to foreign customers' concerns about NSA access.
Behavioral Changes
Studies documented a "chilling effect" on internet users:
- Wikipedia articles on privacy-sensitive topics saw 20-30% drops in views after June 2013.
- Google searches for terms that could be perceived as government-sensitive declined 5%.
- Journalists reported sources becoming more reluctant to communicate, even through secure channels.
Where Is Snowden Now?
Snowden fled to Hong Kong before the first stories published, then attempted to travel to Latin America. His passport was revoked mid-flight during a layover in Moscow, stranding him in Russia, where he has remained for over a decade.
Timeline:
- 2013: Granted temporary asylum in Russia
- 2020: Granted permanent residency
- 2022: Granted Russian citizenship by Putin decree
- 2023: Received Russian passport; registered as taxpayer in Moscow suburb
Snowden and his wife Lindsay have two children, both born in Russia. He maintains he never wanted to stay there: "It is not my choice to be in Russia." His attempts to obtain asylum elsewhere have been blocked by U.S. pressure.
He still faces three felony charges under the Espionage Act, carrying potential sentences of up to 30 years. The charges do not distinguish between selling secrets to foreign powers and exposing illegal government programs to journalists. Under current law, Snowden would be prohibited from arguing that his disclosures served the public interest.
The Predictability of Power
Before the Snowden revelations, people who warned that the government was conducting mass surveillance were dismissed as paranoid. After, the government admitted it and argued the surveillance was legal.
This pattern recurs throughout history: suspicion of unchecked power is treated as conspiracy theory until evidence emerges, at which point it becomes yesterday's news.
The NSA's bulk collection programs weren't aberrations. They were the predictable result of:
- Secret legal interpretations that the public couldn't challenge because they couldn't know they existed
- A surveillance court (FISC) that approved 99.97% of government requests
- Classification systems that made exposing abuse a federal crime
- An intelligence community that learned from each exposure not to stop, but to hide better
Bruce Schneier again: "The NSA canceled a program here and a program there, and it is now more public about defense. But I don't think it is any less aggressive about either bulk or targeted surveillance. Certainly its legal authorities haven't been restricted in any way."
Power, when unchecked, does what power does. The only question is whether anyone is watching.
The Bottom Line
Snowden's revelations triggered real changes: the bulk phone program ended, the web got encrypted, a federal court declared the surveillance illegal, and public awareness of government surveillance permanently increased.
But the surveillance state didn't collapse. It adapted. Section 702 was expanded in 2024. The FBI still searches Americans' communications without warrants. Executive Order 12333 surveillance continues with no meaningful oversight. And the man who exposed it all remains in exile, facing decades in prison if he returns.
The lesson isn't that reform is impossible. It's that reform is incomplete. The encryption revolution made mass surveillance harder. But targeted surveillance continues. And every time Congress has the chance to add a warrant requirement for searching Americans' data, it fails, usually by a handful of votes.
The next fight is April 2026, when Section 702 expires again. Whether Congress adds real protections or simply rubber-stamps another expansion will determine whether Snowden's revelations led to lasting reform or just a temporary inconvenience for the surveillance state.
References
- Electronic Frontier Foundation, 10 Years After Snowden
- Freedom of the Press Foundation, 11 Years After Snowden
- Wikipedia, Snowden Disclosures
- ACLU, Senate Expands Section 702 Surveillance (2024)
- Brennan Center, Senate Approves Surveillance Expansion
- Wikipedia, USA Freedom Act
- NPR, Putin Grants Snowden Russian Citizenship
- Wikipedia, Snowden Effect
- IAPP, The Snowden Disclosures, 10 Years On