Edward Snowden changed the world. His disclosures proved that multinational corporations and the U.S. government have been working hand in hand in an expansive program designed to surveil American citizens as well as vast numbers of foreigners. Working for Dell but assigned to an NSA facility, Snowden gained access to the deepest details of this operation. He collected hundreds of thousands of documents, fled the country, and passed them to hand-picked journalists. The rest, as they say, is history. Snowden …

Every analogy breaks down at some point which is why it is unwise to push an illustration too far. In the past I have written about the data each of us creates on a daily basis and have illustrated with airplanes and bloodhounds. We create data all the time and just as airplanes leave contrails in the skies, we leave a trail of data; like bloodhounds can track a trail of sweat and breath and dropped skin cells, people with …