The 30-year-old also claimed that by spending so much effort on harvesting communications data en masse, US security agencies were failing to pick up would-be terrorists such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers alleged to have bombed last year’s Boston Marathon, who had been previously flagged to the US as a cause for concern by Russian authorities. “We are monitoring everyone’s communications rather than suspects’ communications,” he said. “If we hadn’t spent so much on mass surveillance, if we had followed traditional patterns, we might have caught him.”

Snowden also pointed to the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underwear bomber” who attempted to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The US failed to intercept him despite several opportunities, including a warning from his father to US officials in Nigeria.

Friend of mine pointed out post recent events that we've spent years with the whole security theatre of taking your shoes off, no bottle of liquid, full body scanners and massive invasion of privacy and all that yet it turns out 'checking the face & details on the passport vaguely matches the person getting on the plane' doesn't even to be happening at some airports.

Most of it's theatre it seems. I remember blokes on a school trip walking through the metal detector wearing bullet necklaces that didn't trigger it, and the dogs... well, I know of one bloke they should have jumped on

If a plane was hijacked now I think that the passengers would retaliate. They now know that negotiation is not an option.