His point is that those laws were basically ignored, until now.

The conversation started all the way back, with the Patriot Act, but until now the dynamic was roughly: politicians write lofty laws that pay lip service to data sovereignty, then add enough loopholes so that nothing has to change in practice, and nobody really cares.

Now people do care, and they don't want to use those loopholes. It's pretty obvious why things have changed.