What We Knew About the NSA Before Snowden

National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, MD
(Saul Loeb/AFP Getty Images)

It's been twelve months since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the United States global spy network.  His released documents shined a brighter light on the depth of the activities by the National Security Agency.

Snowden shared the previously closely held information with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for The Guardian.  It is well worth going through Greenwald's reporting "On Security and Liberty".

What was interesting about the Snowden leaks to longtime observers of state spying activities is that much of the information that Greenwald reported on was already public information.  

Published in 1982

James Bamford wrote “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on N.S.A., America’s Most Secret Agency” in 1982.  In a recent piece for The New Yorker, Alexander Nazaryan outlines some major themes from the book:   

...the NSA has tested the bounds of the Fourth Amendment before. Project Shamrock, carried out after the Second World War, compelled companies like Western Union to hand over, on a daily basis, all telegraphs entering and leaving the United States. A younger sibling, Project Minaret, born in 1969, collected information on “individuals or organizations, involved in civil disturbances, antiwar movements/demonstrations and Military deserters involved in the antiwar movement.”  

Fast forward to 2005 and we find this report from The New York Times titled "Bush Let's U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts".  In it James Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported:

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the [National Security Agency] has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. 

NSA employee Russell Tice came out publicly in 2006 and suggested that millions of Americans could be subject to NSA spying.  Tice spoke in-depth with James Corbett on The Corbett Report a few weeks after the first round of Snowden revelations. 

Published in 2009

James Bamford gained more popularity six years ago after publishing "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America".  When promoting the book on PBS the author participated in a Q&A in February of 2009.  Thomas Nelms asked:    

Q: Do you see the scope and breadth of eavesdropping on communications in the U.S. expanding as time goes on, and if so, propelled by what circumstances?

Bamford: Unless tamed by the Obama administration, the natural tendency is for NSA to continue expanding its coverage area within the U.S. If another domestic terrorist incident takes place, the pace of that expansion will grow exponentially.   

We could list even more sources of information about NSA dragnet operations which were reported in the press well before Edward Snowden came forward but you get the picture. Snowden breaking his silence last June was a cherry on top of a decade long expanding pie.