To some, Edward Snowden is a whistleblower and patriot, and to others, a leaker and traitor. Either way, when the former NSA contractor leaked 1.5 million documents to journalists in 2013, it blew the lid off some of the largest domestic spying operations in US history.
The documents alerted the public to the existence of the NSA's "PRISM" surveillance program, which not only tapped into the fiber optic cables that transmit internet data (the digital equivalent of tapping a phone), it also suggested that the government had access to data from the servers of companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo, although the companies denied providing direct access to their servers.
A secret court order also revealed that Verizon was required to give the NSA data on every call going through its systems on an "ongoing, daily basis," meaning the warrant authorized a wide surveillance "dragnet," unlike most warrants which let the government collect information on specific targets.