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dinfinityyesterday at 11:24 AM1 replyview on HN

I should have said "nothing fundamentally". I'm sure he didn't give up his life for HTTPS everywhere and SMTP over TLS..

The reality is that the public moved on more or less unperturbed and that the US intelligence agencies did the same. Sure, it was a bump in the road, but they aren't massively limited in what they can do. The US being a surveillance state is closer than ever.


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lern_too_spelyesterday at 2:10 PM

> I'm sure he didn't give up his life for HTTPS everywhere and SMTP over TLS.

He gave up his life because he thought PRISM was a massive violation of the 4th Amendment, and a government that could so easily ignore the 4th Amendment could just as easily ignore the 8th. Now we know that he was completely wrong about PRISM.

> Sure, it was a bump in the road, but they aren't massively limited in what they can do.

The US intelligence agencies were limited by the 4th Amendment before the leaks and continued to be limited by the 4th Amendment after the leaks. The only problem is that the hysteria caused by people uncritically believing Snowden without looking at his documents helped lead to Trump taking over every branch of the US government. An absolute monarch is not limited by a construction, and we'll see how close Trump gets to that.

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