The National Security Agency has quietly recommended that the Trump administration abandon a surveillance program collecting metadata on the phone calls and text messages of hundreds of millions of Americans. The program was launched secretly under President George W. Bush after 9/11 without the approval of federal courts. The secret program’s existence was revealed in 2013 by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. For years the NSA defended the surveillance as an essential tool to fight terrorism, but the NSA now says the surveillance program is no longer worth the effort needed to maintain it. Snowden responded on Twitter by saying, “First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then… they admit you were right all along and maybe shouldn’t have been violating everyone’s rights in the first place?”