The global surveillance disclosure released to media by Edward Snowden has caused tension in the bilateral relations of the United States with several of its allies and economic partners as well as in its relationship with the European Union. In August 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the creation of "a review group on intelligence and communications technologies" that would brief and later report to him. In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the National Security Agency (NSA) to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using "backdoors" in hardware or software. Geoffrey R. Stone, a White House panel member, said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.

U.S. Army General Keith B. Alexander, then director of the NSA, said in June 2013, "These leaks have caused significant and irreversible damage to our nation's security." He added that "the irresponsible release of classified information about these programs will have a long-term detrimental impact on the intelligence community's ability to detect future attacks."

In June 2014, Alexander's recently installed successor as the NSA's director, U.S. Navy Admiral Michael S. Rogers, said that while some terrorist groups had altered their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden, the damage done overall did not lead him to conclude that "the sky is falling." Conceding there was no absolute protection against leaks by a dedicated insider with access to the agency's networks, Rogers said the NSA must nevertheless "ensure that the volume" of data taken by Snowden "can't be stolen again."Sanger, David E. (June 29, 2014) New N.S.A. Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable. The New York Times

Fallout

Shortly after the disclosures were published, President Obama asserted that the American public had no cause for concern because "nobody is listening to your telephone calls", and "there is no spying on Americans".

Allegations of false testimony

On June 21, 2013, the Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper issued an apology for giving erroneous testimony under oath to the United States Congress. Earlier in March that year, Clapper was asked by Senator Ron Wyden to clarify the alleged surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA:

In an interview shortly after Snowden's disclosures were first published, Clapper stated that he had misunderstood Wyden's question and answered in what he thought was the "least untruthful manner".NBC News Exclusive Transcript of Andrea Mitchell's Interview with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, June 9, 2013. Retrieved July 3, 2014. Later, in his letter of apology, Clapper wrote that he had only focused on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during his testimony to Congress, and therefore, he "simply didn't think" about Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which justifies the mass collection of telephone data from U.S. citizens. Clapper said: "My response was clearly erroneous—for which I apologize".

Declassification

To increase transparency and because it is in the public interest the Director of National Intelligence authorized the declassification and public release of the following documents pertaining to the collection of telephone metadata pursuant to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act on July 31, 2013. These documents were: Cover Letter and 2009 Report on the National Security Agency’s Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Cover Letters and 2011 Report on the National Security Agency's Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Primary Order for Business Records Collection Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act

On July 19, 2013, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Obama administration, urging it to allow companies involved in the NSA's surveillance to report about these activities and to increase government transparency.

Treatment of journalism

Press censorship In June 2013, British government officials issued a confidential DA-Notice to several press organizations, with the aim of restricting their ability to report on these leaks. That same month, the United States Army barred its personnel from access to parts of the website of The Guardian after that site's publication of Snowden's leaks."Restricted Web access to the Guardian is Armywide, say officials" , Philipp Molnar, Monterey Herald, June 27, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2014. The entire Guardian website was blocked for personnel stationed throughout Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia.

According to a survey undertaken by the human rights group PEN International, these disclosures have had a chilling effect on American writers. Fearing the risk of being targeted by government surveillance, 28% of PEN's American members have curbed their usage of social media, and 16% have self-censored themselves by avoiding controversial topics in their writings.

Detention without charge On August 18, 2013, David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained for nine hours under Schedule 7 of the United Kingdom's Terrorism Act of 2000. Miranda was returning from Berlin, carrying 58,000 GCHQ documents on a single computer file to Greenwald in Brazil. Greenwald described Miranda's detention as "clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ". The Metropolitan Police and Home Secretary Theresa May called Miranda's detention "legally and procedurally sound". However, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who helped introduce the bill in the House of Lords, said that under the act, police can only detain someone "to assess whether they are involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism." He said, "I am very clear that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr Miranda."David Miranda's detention had no basis in law, says former lord chancellor | World news. The Guardian. (August 21, 2013). Antonio Patriota the Brazilian Minister of External Relations said that Miranda's detention was "not justifiable". The reasons for Miranda's detention were sought from the police by British politicians and David Anderson Q.C., the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. The United States government later said that British officials had given them a "heads up" about Miranda's detention, while adding that the decision to detain him had been a British one.

Destruction of evidence

The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the newspaper had received legal threats from the British government and was urged to surrender all documents leaked by Snowden. Security officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) later made a visit to the newspaper's London headquarters to ensure that all computer hard drives containing Snowden's documents were destroyed.

Editing of interview transcript

After the NSA Director of Compliance John Delong was interviewed by The Washington Post regarding these disclosures, the White House sent a "prepared" statement to The Post and ordered that "none of Delong's comments could be quoted on the record". The Post refused to comply.

Criminal investigation

A criminal investigation of these disclosures, by Britain's Metropolitan Police Service, was reported in November 2013.

Comments On August 18, 2013, Amnesty International asserted that if journalists maintain their independence and report critically about governments, they too may be "targeted" by the British government.

On August 20, 2013, Index on Censorship argued that the British government's "threat of legal action" against The Guardian was a "direct attack on press freedom in the UK".

On September 4, 2013, U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue stressed that the "protection of national security secrets must never be used as an excuse to intimidate the press into silence."

Forced landing of Bolivian President Morales' plane

Five Latin American countries—Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela—voiced their concerns to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after the plane of Bolivia's President Evo Morales was denied entry by a number of western European countries, and was forced to reroute to Austria based on "suspicion that United States whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board". Ban said it was important to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future and emphasized that "A Head of State and his or her aircraft enjoy immunity and inviolability".

Lavabit

On August 8, 2013, Lavabit, a Texas-based secure email service provider reportedly used by Snowden, abruptly announced it was shutting down operations after nearly 10 years of business. The owner, Ladar Levison, posted a statement online saying he would rather go out of business than "become complicit in crimes against the American people." He also said that he was barred by law from disclosing what he had experienced over the preceding 6 weeks, and that he was appealing the case in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Multiple sources speculated that the timing of the statement suggested that Lavabit had been targeted by the US government in its pursuit of information about Snowden. The following day, a similar email service, Silent Circle, preemptively shut down in order to "prevent spying". Snowden said about the Lavabit closure, "Ladar Levison and his team suspended the operations of their 10-year-old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay." He said that "internet titans" like Google should ask themselves why they weren't "fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are."

Impact on trade In March 2014, The New York Times reported that revelations of NSA spying had cost U.S. tech companies, including Microsoft and IBM, over $1 billion. A senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said it was "clear to every single tech company that this is affecting their bottom line," and predicted that the U.S. cloud computing industry could lose $35 billion by 2016. Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, said losses could be as high as $180 billion, or 25 percent of industry revenue.

Allegations of adverse consequences for US and UK security U.S. Army General Keith Alexander, then director of the NSA, said in June 2013, "These leaks have caused significant and irreversible damage to our nation's security." He added that "the irresponsible release of classified information about these programs will have a long-term detrimental impact on the intelligence community's ability to detect future attacks."()

In August, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said that Snowden "has caused us some considerable damage to our intelligence architecture. Our adversaries are changing the way that they communicate."

In October, former GCHQ director Sir David Omand, speaking of how useful for Russia's intelligence services Snowden's stay in Russia could be, told the BBC: "Part of me says that not even the KGB in its heyday of Philby, Burgess and Maclean in the 1950s could have dreamt of acquiring 58,000 highly classified intelligence documents." Snowden stated that he had not leaked any documents to Russia.