[amitparikh]

Hypothetically, could U.S. persons who were affected by this breach claim any sort of financial reprieve for future lost wages? I'd imagine those affected would not be very desirable or even eligible any more for secure work.

[logn]

"The ability of consumers to sue for future harm has, in many cases, been limited by a Supreme Court ruling that on its face had little to do with big commercial breaches. [...] In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against them, concluding that the fear of future harm from surveillance wasn’t enough for plaintiffs to have standing to sue."

from https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/12/data-breach-th...

The article also mentions a pending Supreme Court case (Spokeo v. Robins) which could "'open up the floodgate for lawsuits, in all contexts, but especially in data breach litigation'".

[frandroid]

In theory, yes, but in practice, that's the entire government apparatus that requires security clearance which is suddenly not eligible for getting a new job (or even keeping their current one). So nothing is going to happen there.

[tomjen3]

While it would be bad for the spies I don't think it matters much for the people who, eg analyse geospatial data, since they would only need to be vetted for access to the data.