Privacy isn't about having something to hide. It's about having something to protect.
When Edward Snowden first appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) back in 2019, it wasn't just another podcast episode. It was a cultural earthquake. For nearly three hours, the world’s most famous whistleblower sat in an undisclosed location in Russia, staring into a webcam, and explained to Joe—and millions of us—how our phones are basically snitches in our pockets.
People still talk about it. Why? Because the Joe Rogan Edward Snowden interviews (both #1368 and the follow-up #1536) did something the mainstream news couldn't. They made complex, terrifying surveillance architecture feel like a conversation you'd have over a beer.
But honestly, years later, a lot of the nuance has been lost in the memes. We remember the "turn off your Wi-Fi" advice, but we forget the actual mechanics of how the system broke.
The "Dirty Word" That Changed Everything
Snowden wasn't always a rebel. He was a true believer, a guy who joined the army to fight in Iraq and ended up in the CIA and NSA because he was a wizard with systems.
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On the podcast, he told Joe about a program called Stellar Wind.
Before 2013, most of us assumed the government needed a warrant to look at our stuff. You know, the Fourth Amendment? Snowden found out that after 9/11, the government basically flipped a switch. They stopped looking for "targets" and started looking at "everyone."
He described a process called "dirty word searches." Imagine a giant Google search, but instead of searching the public web, the NSA is searching every private email, text, and metadata record passing through US servers. If you hit a "dirty word," you were flagged.
The crazy part? The people running these programs didn't think they were villains. They thought they were the "good guys" doing whatever it took. But as Snowden pointed out to Joe, when you give the government a "little dial" of power, they don't just turn it back to zero when the crisis is over. They turn it until it breaks.
Why Your Phone Is a Tracking Device (Even When It's Off)
One of the biggest viral moments from the Joe Rogan Edward Snowden sit-down was the discussion about smartphones. Joe, looking visibly unsettled, asked the question we all wanted to: "How do they actually track us?"
Snowden’s answer was chillingly simple.
Every mobile phone is constantly screaming "here I am" to the nearest cell tower. It has to. That’s how you get calls. But that connection creates a permanent record of your physical movement.
- The Problem: This data doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the service provider.
- The Loophole: Since it’s "business data," the government argued they didn't need a warrant to grab it in bulk.
He basically told Joe that the movements of your phone are the movements of you as a person. If your phone is in a room with three other phones at 2:00 AM, the government knows who you're sleeping with, who you're meeting for a secret protest, and which doctor you're seeing.
They don't need to listen to your calls if they know everywhere you've been for the last five years.
The Myth of the "Nothing to Hide" Argument
"I don't care about privacy because I'm not doing anything wrong."
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We've all heard it. Joe brought it up, too. Snowden’s rebuttal is probably the most important thing he’s ever said: Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Privacy is the foundation of all other rights. Without it, you can't have a private thought, a private conversation, or a private life.
Snowden explained that when you know you're being watched, you change your behavior. You become "smaller." You don't search for that weird medical symptom. You don't read that controversial article. You self-censor.
That’s how you kill a free society without ever firing a shot.
Life in Russia and the 2026 Reality
It’s easy to forget that Snowden is still "trapped" in Russia. He told Joe he never intended to stay there; he was on his way to Latin America when the US government canceled his passport while he was in the Moscow airport transit zone.
By 2022, he became a Russian citizen. Critics love to use this against him, implying he’s a "pawn" of Putin.
But on the podcast, Snowden was pretty blunt about his situation. He doesn't love being there. He just prefers a Russian apartment to an American solitary confinement cell. He still works for the Freedom of the Press Foundation and pushes for better encryption.
In the years since his Rogan appearances, things haven't exactly gotten better. We've seen the rise of Pegasus spyware, which can infect a phone with zero clicks. We've seen AI being used to scrape entire social media histories to build "predictive policing" models.
Snowden warned us. He told Joe that the architecture of oppression was being built. Now, in 2026, we’re living in it.
What You Can Actually Do
If you're feeling paranoid after revisiting the Joe Rogan Edward Snowden saga, don't just throw your phone in a river. That’s dramatic and doesn't solve much.
Instead, look at the "bricks" Snowden talked about. He said you don't have to save the world; you just have to lay one brick.
Use End-to-End Encryption
Stop using SMS for everything. Use apps like Signal. It’s not perfect, but it makes bulk collection much harder for the "alphabet agencies." If the data is encrypted, they can see who you talked to, but not what you said.
Audit Your App Permissions
Does that flashlight app really need your location and microphone access? Probably not. Go into your settings and strip away every permission that isn't vital to the app's function.
Support Privacy Legislation
The only way to truly fix this is at the policy level. Support candidates and organizations (like the EFF) that fight for digital rights. The courts have slowly started to rule against some of the NSA's bulk collection, but it’s a long game.
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Normalize Privacy
Stop mocking people for being "paranoid." Privacy is a digital hygiene issue. The more of us who use encrypted tools, the more we protect the vulnerable—journalists, whistleblowers, and activists—by making their secure communication look "normal" rather than suspicious.
Snowden’s appearances on Rogan weren't meant to make us hide in bunkers. They were meant to wake us up to the fact that the "invisible" world of data has very real consequences for our physical freedom. The "panopticon," as he called it, is already built. The question is whether we’re going to be comfortable living in it, or if we’re going to start poking holes in the walls.