In June 2013, the lens through which Americans view government changed dramatically. It was now PRISM.
PRISM is a program that allowed the National Security Agency (NSA), with help from the FBI, to obtain unimaginable amounts of data from large technology companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Despite previous statements that the NSA did not collect data “directly” from tech companies, American whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that it was collecting data and said it was only part of a bigger picture that showed the US was in a massive surveillance game.
With the veil lifted, change was inevitable. The passage of the USA Freedom Act in 2015 led to major legal changes, including the rise of digital privacy advocacy groups and a court ruling that the NSA’s phone data surveillance was illegal.
After Snowden, the data flood will only accelerate
But what has actually changed?
“Everything has changed, but nothing has changed,” noted security engineer Bruce Schneier told Cointelegraph. not dead yet show. “Certainly, surveillance is still ongoing.”
Schneier, a New York Times bestselling author and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, didn’t stop there.
The scale of the data problem is poorly understood, Schneider said. Not only has the data collected prior to the 2013 Snowden breach increased dramatically, but the granularity of that data has also increased significantly.
In December 2025, investigative reporters from the French newspaper Le Monde successfully tracked spies, special forces, and people close to the French president using mobile phone advertising data purchased from a major broker.
“In the case of our police officers, we can follow them all the way to famous sports stores, recycling centers, gas stations, and even home,” the journalists wrote.
The quantity and quality of modern data enables mass surveillance at levels never seen before, making surveillance capitalism the basis of the status quo. But now, Schneier warns, parallel to the rise of mass surveillance is a new threat: “bulk spying.”
“The fact that AI can convert audio to text and summarize it means we are entering a world of bulk spying in addition to bulk surveillance (…) I guarantee you that the United States, China, Russia (and) other countries are doing this.”
The NSA collected data from the largest technology monopolies at the time, and Schneier worries that history is repeating itself, this time with regard to AI companies.
“All the horrors of social media are coming back, made even worse by AI,” he said.
But a dark dystopian future may not be set in stone. Privacy is trending inside and outside of cryptocurrencies like never before. Countless invasions of privacy once caused apathy, then discomfort. Now it’s about anger and action. Thousands of concessions may have finally reached critical mass, and real change may be within reach.
“It’s hard to imagine that in 50 years we’ll be seeing this level of mass surveillance, whether it’s corporate or government,” Schneier told the Register. “We’ll see these business practices as evidence of our unethical past, just like the sweatshops of today.”
