And if they are digital, how has there not been any sort of hack? ‘Anonymous’ or foreign actors would surely love to have a chance to air the dirty laundry, no?

  • it_depends_man@lemmy.world
    862·
    4 days ago

    Worse, Snowden did leak an absurd amount of gov details and documents and info and it did nothing to stop what’s happening. People barely acknowledged it.

    Maybe someone would martyr themselves. But doing it for nothing? Not appealing.

    • quick_snail@feddit.nl
      281·
      4 days ago

      Dude, it changed a ton. Facebook was http only back then. Huuuuuge roll-out of encryption followed the Snowdon leaks.

      It lead to massive increases in secured public infrastructure.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, the Snowden leaks didn’t change a ton for the end users… But it was a big kick in the pants for the site admins, programmers, database admins, etc who build all of the internet’s infrastructure.

    • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      46·
      4 days ago

      It did actually have some effect, though. The GDPR and countries reducing their dependence on the USA’s intelligence services are part of it.

      I’m also reminded of the Panama Papers, which did make some bankers in Iceland step down.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, the government’s big shift from “spy on our citizens” to “create a private corporation and pay them to spy on our citizens” was largely driven by public scrutiny. Governments realized that people were watching what they did online. And rather than stop encroaching on peoples’ privacy, the various governments simply shifted towards hiring private contractors to do it for them.

          A giant “Spy Agency To Definitely Spy On All Of Our Own Citizens: Fifty Bajillion Dollars” line item on the government budget looks bad when lawmakers go to vote on it. But that same fifty bajillion dollars allocated to “Private Government Contractor 19452046” looks a lot better on paper.