It s been two years since the first reports based on the Edward Snowden leaks revealed massive NSA spying.
Snowden, the former U.S. government tech contractor, has written an op-ed in today s New York Times looking at what has happened since.
The difference is profound, Snowden wrote. He points to recent developments including a court finding the NSA s bulk collection of phone records illegal and the adoption of the USA Freedom Act, which is meant to rein in the phone-records collection.
Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but it is only the latest product of a change in global awareness, he said, pointing to policy changes elsewhere, such as in Europe and Latin America.
Snowden also hailed technological changes in addressing privacy and security issues that have allowed for unprecedented surveillance.
Secret flaws in critical infrastructure that had been exploited by governments to facilitate mass surveillance have been detected and corrected, he wrote. Basic technical safeguards such as encryption — once considered esoteric and unnecessary — are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple.
Still, Snowden said privacy remains under threat. The documents he leaked revealed many spying programs, including ones that use information tech companies have on their users; new revelations continue to trickle out. And governments haven t stopped trying to gain or retain their surveillance powers. For example, the Guardian reports that Michael Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI s Counterterrorism Division, argued against encryption when he spoke this week at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee. He s just the latest U.S. surveillance or law-enforcement agency official to express such sentiment.
Snowden — who some consider a traitor, is wanted by the U.S. government and lives in asylum in Russia — mentioned that he worried that he and the journalists who reported the news based on documents he took put [their] privileged lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations. But, he wrote: Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.
Meanwhile, in light of the above, there are calls for the U.S. to let Edward Snowden come home.
Photo of Edward Snowden by the Guardian via Associated Press
