In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. government engaged in mass surveillance of the American people. Some of the snooping delved into the content of emails and phone calls. But much of it was of metadata—who people contact and when. While not as revealing as actual messages, it let the government build profiles on people and their affiliations. This week, lawmakers—some of whom allowed federal agencies to accumulate and exercise such power—received a lesson in how disturbing such scrutiny can be when they found out the last administration monitored their calls.
