These changes, so far, have been largely window-dressing. In an act of reconciliation, US President Barack Obama set up a committee to review the NSA’s powers with a view to making changes to the process and bolstering the Safe Harbour data protection regime. This led to international outrage, not just from customers, but from heads of state who were being snooped upon, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. NSA was using broad and long-lasting warrants obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without the need to obtain individual warrants. But Snowden exposed access to and storage of data in bulk by the US National Security Agency, under its PRISM programme.
The use of surveillance powers was already fairly well known. Then, two years later, former NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden made his revelations. But logic suggested that the US government would not access everyone’s data and would target its law enforcement efforts to maximise its effectiveness against those engaged in unlawful activities. That seemed a remarkable statement at the time – that Microsoft customers in the EU, with no apparent connection to the US, could still have their data being accessed by the US government because there was a US company in the supply chain.
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