Comment by lesuorac

There was something substantially new after Snowden though - prior to his leaks if you pointed out what the US government was likely up to people would laugh at the idea and ask for more sources. Afterwards they tended just accept it.

There was a big cultural shift from the default assumption in polite company being "They're spying on Middle Easterners" to "they're spying on everyone, everywhere" when talking about US spying.

> There's long been surveillance programs and also numerous laws outlining the responsibilities of telecom provides to enable wire tapping.

Laws which the telecoms were knowingly and willfully breaking for years.

You do remember that Congress gave them retroactive immunity? [0][1] You do know that this was only granted because people COULD sue (and were suing) them because of the information made public by Snowden and others?

[0] <https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/retroactive-tele...>

[1] See Title II of the this bill <https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/6304>

>There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...