Anyone who cared already had a good idea about what the NSA did. Go and read The Cuckoo’s Egg, a book published in 1989 goes into what the NSA does. it was public knowledge in 1989 that the NSA was monitoring all phone calls and all internet traffic back in the days of modems.

Nobody cared back then and the NSA continues to do what it does and nobody cares now. Nobody actually cares about privacy and constantly willingly share pretty much all information about themselves that’s possible to be to be put onto a computer.

Snowden essentially just revealed that the NSA exists to people that were ignorant of it. But while doing so he revealed other state secrets to adversaries.

When the EU makes laws that require companies to disclose they’re tracking you, people are angry at the EU because the cookie popups are annoying. It’s very clear people would rather be tracked without knowledge of it than have even a popup on their screen. All of the information these companies collect is bought and sold regularly.

It’s trivial for the NSA to just buy all of your purchase history and all of your activities online because all of that is tracked by marketing companies and no one gives a shit. Suddenly you’re upset if the government knows what everyone else knows? It’s like putting your personal information on a billboard and getting angry if someone that works for the government happens to drive by and see that billboard.

The only thing of significance that Snowden did was share specific state secrets to adversaries. He currently lives in Russia and says whatever Putin demands that he says. He’s just a Putin stooge now.

People like the narrative of this guy who blew the lid on something nobody knew before, but anyone who cared to know already knew the NSA monitors communications, it’s kinda their whole thing. According to the narrative, the evil governments are after because he revealed the existence of the NSA. The truth is the existence of the NSA wasn’t a secret it’s just the ignorant didn’t know about it. The whole point of the NSA is to monitor communications, and it was widely known the degree to which they did this. The budget of the NSA is something you can see in public records.

Not long after the Snowden story went from the limelight, everyone went back to not caring about the NSA. Nobody actually cares about privacy, they just pretend to be upset about it for a short time before there’s some other story to pretend to be upset about.