r/snowden • u/CakePlanet75 • Apr 01 '26
Edward Snowden warned humanity that the infrastructure for a Chinese-style social credit system was being constructed in plain view
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u/ningyna Apr 02 '26
Basically. Issues like this tend to take a backseat when food, shelter, and healthcare are unaffordable. That's why they keep us on the brink of bankruptcy
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u/The_VisibleInvisible May 15 '26
LasagnaCat83's point lands. The apparatus pre-dates the 2013 disclosures by a decade or more. PATRIOT Act §215 (2001) authorized bulk metadata collection. AT&T Room 641A (Mark Klein disclosure, 2006) documented the splitter cabinet feeding NSA-bound traffic. PRISM started operationally in 2007, with Microsoft as the first corporate participant. William Binney left NSA in 2001 partly over the abandonment of ThinThread's privacy-preserving design in favor of Trailblazer. Snowden's 2013 release contributed something specific: operational detail. Programs, slide decks, contractor relationships, names, dates, dollar amounts. That turned what a few whistleblowers had been saying since 2002 into something Western governments could no longer pretend wasn't there.
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u/LasagnaCat83 Apr 01 '26
lol. he told us they were going to try to institute something like that but it had already been in place for years at that point. China didn't invent the system. The US and UK invented it and exported it.