“Document metadata in the original Snowden cache reveals additional context about which programs were active and how broadly they were authorized.”
Twelve years after the original release, researchers are still finding new things in the Snowden archive by reading the file metadata the publishers redacted at the document level but not at the bytes level. The implications are not surveillance theater. They are concrete confirmation that several programs the agency publicly retired were operationally active years longer than anyone outside admitted. The archive will keep producing news for another decade.