And if they are digital, how has there not been any sort of hack? ‘Anonymous’ or foreign actors would surely love to have a chance to air the dirty laundry, no?

    • it_depends_man@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Worse, Snowden did leak an absurd amount of gov details and documents and info and it did nothing to stop what’s happening. People barely acknowledged it.

      Maybe someone would martyr themselves. But doing it for nothing? Not appealing.

      • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        20 days ago

        It did actually have some effect, though. The GDPR and countries reducing their dependence on the USA’s intelligence services are part of it.

        I’m also reminded of the Panama Papers, which did make some bankers in Iceland step down.

      • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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        19 days ago

        Dude, it changed a ton. Facebook was http only back then. Huuuuuge roll-out of encryption followed the Snowdon leaks.

        It lead to massive increases in secured public infrastructure.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          18 days ago

          Yeah, the Snowden leaks didn’t change a ton for the end users… But it was a big kick in the pants for the site admins, programmers, database admins, etc who build all of the internet’s infrastructure. The mindset shift from “I just need to keep my server secure from external attacks” to “I need to keep my server secure from external attacks and make sure every end user remains secure” was massive. Before the Snowden leak, many site admins basically had the mentality of “eh, nobody will be interested in intercepting my unencrypted traffic. It’s not like this is high security stuff anyways…”