HN Reader

The Wyden–Daines Amendment in 2020: a huge privacy amendment that would’ve limited surveillance missed the Senate by literally one vote. It would’ve stopped the government from getting American's web browsing and search history without a warrant. And honestly, I still have zero respect for anyone who voted against it. If you need a warrant to walk into my house, you should need a warrant to walk into my digital life too.

What Snowden exposed more than 10 years ago, none of that was addressed, the surveillance machine just got worse if anything

This comment section is strange, a lot of people trying to discredit Snowden, saying he shouldn't have released the files, should be in prison, etc. 12 years ago this was HUGE news and had a major impact on the internet and everyone thanked Snowden for these documents! I certainly am thankful. Disappointed in my country that they literally said that "spying between friends is a no-go" but then did nothing and intimidated journalists and legalized it instead. And thanks to the author for giving the documents another look, found it very interesting. There is also part 2: https://libroot.org/posts/going-through-snowden-documents-pa...

It’d be nice if someone released the 99% of Snowden documents that remain unreleased

This is a good idea and I'd love to see a series going through the, arguably more significant, Paradise Papers. Part of the problem there was the sheer size of the leak. Now that I think about it, this would actually be a great application of modern AIs for parsing

Some what (vaguely) related to this topic About surveillance.

I recall a local political and business figure making statements you and/or I are being surveilled by the government. Everyone thought that's not likely , its not possible, he is a bit imbalanced..

After the dumping of documents' from Snowden and Assange it was shown to be possible Things like, if its even possible , it could plausibly be happening. The government has somewhat infinite resources.

The altered software for hard drive hacking for example. Wow. Intercepting packages in mail and altering the software ...

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary.

Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "you have no privacy, get over it." I wish that weren't the case, but I'd like to see more representation embrace privacy as the basic right it should be again.

How can Snowdon possibly feel as the international situation changes so totally since he fled? It boggles the mind.

Where are the rest of them? Glen Greenwald has never answered that question well enough for me.

Very interesting and useful analysis. I am looking forward to more. It was very strange that the Snowden documents didn't get more analysis than they did (even though there was some significant analysis).

I wonder what this organization is though. The stated purpose seems a little anachronistic, similar to the ideas of the early 2010s, which were amply covered by Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (2018). A number of organizations of that type ended up being funded by U.S. intelligence as it ended up benefiting military intelligence in various ways, e.g. the Tor Project is funded like this and provides chaff cover for intelligence operations (if all Tor traffic was military, there would be little point to it since it would stick out like a sore thumb) and e.g. NSA can de-anonymize Tor traffic since they can correlate entry and exit traffic with total system awareness (an asymmetric capability no other nation or sub-national organization has).

There's a great podcast + transcript with Chris Hedges and author Yasha Levine about this book here: https://consortiumnews.com/2025/04/13/chris-hedges-report-th...

Doing this analysis is a great way to get some credibility, but it also doesn't reveal anything that wasn't publicly available. Nonetheless, I still appreciate it!

We're so fucking apathetic. Organizations that wish to strip your privacy should be treated the same as organizations who commit atrocities towards the planet or their fellow inhabitants. Expose them all. Shame them. Vote against them. Pass laws to weekend their power, etc. We've totally been down this road before with alcohol, cigarettes, climate control, pollution, trans fats, guns (in some countries), etc. It's completely possible to do it again for online privacy. Use your voice now, before you find you are unable to do so at all.

Is there a mirror for this? my library has FortNight blocking it. ( bad certificate, leads them to believe its a spam site...).

I can’t tell if it’s the author(s) or the content of the actual report but I found this to be underwhelming.

Since it's been a while now, what are the thoughts on the snowden leaks contributing to the rise of distrust in the government and governmental institutions in the US?

I'm wondering if trump could have ever succeeded without that path being prepared for him by snowden's leaks and occupy wallstreet. I'm not saying snowden did anything wrong, to the contrary, he thought things would change and they didn't, I'm wondering whether that contributed to the feeling of americans feeling disenfranchised. Relations with europe also started souring around that time.

I think snowden did the right thing, but like many in tech (especially here on HN), he didn't understand that American's didn't care about what's in the leaks all that much. it wasn't his burden to weigh the pros and cons, his burden was to do what he thought was right. But looking back, nothing good came out of the leaks, I wish they didn't happen to begin with. Of course if you're not an American lots of good things came out of it. I'm certain we have less privacy now, more governmental spying, and even more support for it. at least before we had the illusion that we had some rights to privacy from the government. Now that they're exposed and gotten away with it, I fear they've become more emboldened.

I guess I am glad the whole thing was exposed, but I am regretful of how things turned out. Would it have been better if there was more trust in governmental institutions, and if the US IC kept their capabilities secret for longer? would they have been able to interfere with russian influence campaigns in 2015-16 if so? Is the world better of now?

I suppose in 5-10 more years these things will be historical events and historians might answer these questions with a more objective perspective.

I've read people say that some of the documents were fake to sensationalize the story.

With Putin and China, honestly I prefer feeling like the US has the best cyber weapons available, and I am not even american.

"Privacy" is different in the digital age. Computers make it easier for criminals to do what they do, so it's fair if the government tries to peek into it.