[tal8d]

And this is why the morning of the Snowden leaks will always be a fond memory for me. Anybody with experience in the kinetic aspects of the USG, who also had a solid understanding of what is technologically feasible, knew about that mass surveillance was a certainty. The Department of State's process for designating terrorist organizations is instructive here: groups are evaluated on both disposition and capability. Well, the USG has repeatedly demonstrated a predisposition for spying on citizens and relatively recently it gained the technological ability to do so at scale. Lots of people feeling vindicated that morning.

[torified]

It's good that people have some knowledge that the spying is happening now, but what has really changed?

Everyone is still being spied upon, only now people seem to have a sense of inevitability about it.

[tal8d]

It is actually a pretty long list of resulting changes. I'll describe a couple:

The German government became very interested in open source firmware, I've heard talk of RFPs requiring it from vendors - which compels vendors to put pressure on manufacturers, leading to fewer binary blobs.

Google became very interested in the power processor. Years ago their decommissioning process involved a hole being put through the Intel processor. For a long time I just assumed that there was a deal in place with Intel requiring a certified field destroy, but I'm now thinking that it was their distrust of Intel's backdooring. That may sound extreme, but nobody can say with certainty that whatever bs is occurring in ring -6 isn't caching private keys. Intel is now trying very hard to fool people into believing that they're going to be open sourcing their firmware - this will not happen.

As far as the social consequences, that is hard to say - I'm less plugged into popular culture than most. I'd be surprised if it didn't influence people's views of the government though, especially if they had voted for Hope and Change™. Greenwald timed and ordered the releases perfectly so that the government would predictably lie, only to be proven a liar the following news cycle. This pattern repeated a few times before they got the hint and STFU. And then there was the director of the NSA showing up at Defcon in a black t-shirt and jeans...