In June 2013, the lens via which US residents checked out their authorities was dramatically modified; it was now a PRISM.
PRISM was this system that enabled the Nationwide Safety Company (NSA), with some assist from the FBI, to acquire unthinkable portions of information from tech giants like Google, Fb and Microsoft, amongst others.
Regardless of earlier statements that the NSA didn’t acquire knowledge “straight” from tech firms, American whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that they did, and that it was only one portion of a bigger image displaying that the US was within the mass surveillance sport.
With the veil lifted, change was inevitable. We noticed main legislative reform with the USA FREEDOM Act passing in 2015, the rise of digital privateness advocacy teams and courts ruling that the NSA’s telephone knowledge surveillance was unlawful.
After Snowden, the information flood solely accelerated
Virtually talking, although, what has actually modified?
“The whole lot has modified, and nothing has modified,” famend safety technologist Bruce Schneier informed Cointelegraph’s Not Useless But present. “Definitely, the surveillance remains to be taking place.”
Schneier, a New York Occasions bestselling creator and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Middle for Web & Society, didn’t cease there along with his warnings.
The size of the information drawback is seldom understood, Schneier says. Not solely is there exponentially extra knowledge collected than within the lead-up to the Snowden leaks in 2013, however it is usually markedly extra granular.
In December 2025, investigative journalists at French newspaper Le Monde managed to trace spies, particular forces and people near the French president with cell phone advert knowledge bought from a significant dealer.
“Within the case of our policeman, we will observe him to a well-known sports activities retailer, to the recycling middle, to the fuel station… And all the best way residence,” the journalists wrote.
The amount and high quality of contemporary knowledge permit mass surveillance at a degree by no means seen earlier than, and surveillance capitalism is foundational to the established order. However now, Schneier warns, parallel to the rise of mass surveillance is the brand new risk of “bulk spying.”
“The truth that AI can go voice-to-text and summarize means we’re coming into the world of bulk spying along with bulk surveillance […] I’ll assure you, the US, China, Russia, [and] different nations, are doing this.”
The NSA collected knowledge from the most important tech monopolies of the time, and Schneier is anxious that historical past is repeating itself, this time with AI firms.
“The entire horrors of social media are coming again in a method that’s even worse with AI,” he mentioned.
A bleak, dystopian future is probably not set in stone, nevertheless. Privateness is trending, each inside and out of doors of crypto, in a method it by no means has earlier than. The myriad invasions of privateness as soon as evoked apathy, then malaise. Now it verges on outrage and motion. The hundreds of concessions made could have lastly reached crucial mass, and true change may very well be inside attain.
Schneier informed The Register, “I simply can’t think about that we’ll have this degree of mass surveillance, both company or authorities, in 50 years. I believe we’ll view these enterprise practices like we view sweatshops right now: as proof of our much less moral previous selves.”