NSA Mass Surveillance (PRISM)

For years, people who said "the government is reading your emails" were dismissed as paranoid. Then in June 2013, Edward Snowden leaked classified NSA documents revealing that PRISM gave the agency direct access to the servers of Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other tech companies. The NSA was collecting metadata on virtually every phone call in America and reading emails of foreign nationals without warrants. The Snowden leaks changed global policy: the USA FREEDOM Act (2015) reformed bulk collection, the EU-US Privacy Shield was invalidated, and encryption became mainstream.