My previous comment was unpopular and I'm sure this will be also. I don't doubt the leaks from Snowden increased awareness of privacy. Snowdens early justific

My previous comment was unpopular and I'm sure this will be also. I don't doubt the leaks from Snowden increased awareness of privacy. Snowdens early justification statements were "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building. " He was either a pawn or naive. Perhaps at the time we all were. Snowden then went to China and then Russia. These are hardly the bastion of human rights, privacy and freedom that he supposedly fought for. At some point we have to admit that all countries of any significance likely have intelligence and monitoring programmes. Maybe (in countries with some semblance of freedom) these are there to protect us from those countries that work against those same principles Snowden claimed to support.