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Who remembers these slides leaked by Snowden back in 2013, detailing how big players were working as actual "providers" for the US NSA's PRISM program. Not via warrants, but as data sharing partners.
I remember in the 4 yrs before, when @k0a1a & I were lecturing on precisely this, privacy workshops, making interventions to alert people to the risks, we'd be scowled at, sometimes even angrily. Told we were being doomer.
A shiny-eyed tech optimism that aged badly, then forgot about it all
@JulianOliver @k0a1a
And more interestingly nobody remembered that happened when Obama was US president.
People keep cherishing the 'good time' they thought Obama brought, but politicians are almost the same, corrupted, hypocritical, and evil.
@Pouakai @k0a1a Yes. Obama vastly expanded the killer drone program (multiplied that of Bush) and granted sweeping new surveillance powers to statecraft. Spying on the Bundestag was on his watch, as was Stuxnet.
For any good he did, he handed an enormous arsenal to Trump. That is what happened, forever part of his legacy.
@JulianOliver @Pouakai @k0a1a
Being affable, witty and good looking can be a helluva mask https://www.ianwelsh.net/what-is-obama/
Right. And back in 2008, Obama broke his promise to support a filibuster against the FISA Amendments Act, which helped provid legal cover for PRISM and was at the time the biggest expansion ever of warrantless wiretapping activity. Since then presidents and Congressional leadership in both parties have pressed to reauthorize FISA Section 702 without reforms -- and in 2024 expanded of FISA authorities in what Ron Wyden called "one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” I recently summarized the whole sordid history on @getfisaright.net -- https://getfisaright.net/2026/06/26/get-fisa-right-turns-18/
Right. And back in 2008, Obama broke his promise to support a filibuster against the FISA Amendments Act, which helped provid legal cover for PRISM and was at the time the biggest expansion ever of warrantless wiretapping activity. Since then presidents and Congressional leadership in both parties have pressed to reauthorize FISA Section 702 without reforms -- and in 2024 expanded of FISA authorities in what Ron Wyden called "one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” I recently summarized the whole sordid history on @getfisaright.net -- https://getfisaright.net/2026/06/26/get-fisa-right-turns-18/
@jdp23 Obama will always be a profound disappointment.
"They monitor your actions from your very own electronics."
source: ITS TIME FOR THE WORDS WRITTEN IN THE LITTLE BOOK TO BE REVEALED - Godshealer7/YouTube
@noplasticshower Some great advice in there! I would've shared it back in the day, had I seen it. Sad I didn't!
@k0a1a Not to say we didn't also have a lot of support too, those with healthy paranoia and/or infrastructure people that could think through the harvest.
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