Less than three years ago, The Guardian journalist Glen Greenwald and a certain computer analyst by the name of Edward Snowdon sent shockwaves around the world by revealing that the both the United States and British governments had been quietly spying on us for years – amassing personal data, phone logs and private emails – often in collaboration with, or in spite of, the big tech businesses. Any notion that the information on our phones and computers is either safe or private has been rapidly eroded by each successive leak.

William Binney, a fellow NSA whistleblower, has warned that the UK’s new Investigatory Powers Bill is not only “totalitarian” but, thanks to the overload of information, will actually make us less safe. The UN, meanwhile, has insisted that the bill will “ultimately stifle fundamental freedoms”. And the government aren’t the only ones interested in your personal data; a backdoor for one, many argue, means a backdoor for all.

Take the Ashley Madison hack, in which the details of some 32 million secretive users were leaked online, leading to multiple suicides. Or the Washington Post, who discovered that the NSA’s treasure trove was so insecure that their journalists were able to peruse over 10,000 innocent citizen’s emails, web chats and pictures, which they claimed included stories of mental health crises, religious and political conversations and photos of infants in bathtubs.