Security News > 2023 > June > 10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned?

Feature The world got a first glimpse into the US government's far-reaching surveillance of American citizens' communications - namely, their Verizon telephone calls - 10 years ago this week when Edward Snowden's initial leaks hit the press.

Wyden was one of two US senators who had sounded the alarm about the Obama administration's surveillance programs even before the Snowden leaks came to light.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued to end the secret phone spying program, which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just days after Snowden disclosed its existence.

"To its credit, the government has engaged in reforms, and there's more transparency now that, on the one hand, has helped build back some trust that was lost, but also has made it easier to shine a light on surveillance misconduct that has happened since then," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told The Register.

"If you ask the government - if you caught them in a room, and they were talking off the record - they would say the biggest impact for us from the Snowden disclosures is that it made big tech companies less cooperative," he continued.

"Ten years have gone by," since the first Snowden disclosures, "And we don't know what other kinds of rights-violating activities have been taking place in secret, and I don't trust our traditional oversight systems, courts and the Congress, to ferret those out," Wizner said.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/06/07/10_years_after_snowden/