> The reality is that the public moved on more or less unperturbed
The public wasn't unperturbed. The ones who didn't know any better believed Snowden's PRISM cock and bull story and rabidly froth about it to this day. The ones who knew better got the phone metadata program shut down, just like the email metadata program that Obama had already shut down according to Snowden's leaks. There were no other programs that could possibly be interpreted as illegal, the government implemented oversight and reporting to make sure the legal programs weren't abused, and the tech companies fixed their security postures to account for state actors that can tap international WANs.
> but they aren't massively limited in what they can do
Once again, the 4th Amendment massively limited them in what they could do. Any recent reductions in the effectiveness of the 4th Amendment are due solely to the concentration of power in Trump, which was helped by conspiracy theorists like Snowden and those who fooloshly believed him.
> The public wasn't unperturbed. The ones who didn't know any better believed Snowden's PRISM cock and bull story and rabidly froth about it to this day.
You're in too deep. Most people don't even know about Snowden. The public is much larger than just a bunch of techies. And that public essentially didn't give a fuck.
> Once again, the 4th Amendment massively limited them in what they could do.
On paper, not in practice. Every since 9/11 the balance of security vs. liberty has been off. The point stands that Snowden changed nothing fundamentally about that (ongoing) slide into dystopia.
The public wasn't unperturbed. The ones who didn't know any better believed Snowden's PRISM cock and bull story and rabidly froth about it to this day. The ones who knew better got the phone metadata program shut down, just like the email metadata program that Obama had already shut down according to Snowden's leaks. There were no other programs that could possibly be interpreted as illegal, the government implemented oversight and reporting to make sure the legal programs weren't abused, and the tech companies fixed their security postures to account for state actors that can tap international WANs.
> but they aren't massively limited in what they can do
Once again, the 4th Amendment massively limited them in what they could do. Any recent reductions in the effectiveness of the 4th Amendment are due solely to the concentration of power in Trump, which was helped by conspiracy theorists like Snowden and those who fooloshly believed him.