I concur. The purpose of Snowden’s leaks was to educate the masses that mass surveillance is a thing, and privacy should be taken seriously. He did not suggest

I concur. The purpose of Snowden’s leaks was to educate the masses that mass surveillance is a thing, and privacy should be taken seriously. He did not suggest the government was breaking the law, just that the law permitted surveillance on a scale that the average person probably wasn’t aware of. As a result, we gained things like GDPR, which will revolutionize privacy worldwide because of its extra-jurisdictional effects. And think about how much more SSL is happening now. Http:// is mostly gone. We have letsencrypt. Google is encrypting all traffic between datacenters. Etc... But no, Snowden did not reveal anything suggesting widespread illegal surveillance of Americans.