1970s In 1972 NSA analyst
Perry Fellwock (under the pseudonym "Winslow Peck") introduced the readers of
Ramparts magazine to the NSA and the
UKUSA Agreement.
2000s on the
World Trade Center led to major reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies, and paved the way for the establishment of the
Director of National Intelligence position. In the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks,
William Binney, along with colleagues
J. Kirke Wiebe and
Edward Loomis and in cooperation with House staffer
Diane Roark, asked the U.S. Defense Department to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting "millions and millions of dollars" on
Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze data carried on communications networks such as the Internet. Binney was also publicly critical of the NSA for spying on U.S. citizens after the
September 11, 2001 attacks. Binney claimed that the NSA had failed to uncover the 9/11 plot despite its massive interception of data. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks,
MI5 started collecting bulk telephone communications data in the United Kingdom (i.e. what telephone numbers called each other and when) and authorized the
Home Secretary under the
Telecommunications Act 1984 instead of the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which would have brought independent oversight and regulation. This was kept secret until announced by the then Home Secretary in 2015. On December 16, 2005,
The New York Times published a report under the headline "
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," which was co-written by
Eric Lichtblau and the
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
James Risen. According to
The Times, the article's date of publication was delayed for a year (past the next presidential election cycle) because of alleged national security concerns.
Russ Tice was later revealed as a major source. In 2006, further details of the NSA's domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens was provided by
USA Today. The newspaper released a report on May 11, 2006 detailing the NSA's "massive database" of phone records collected from "tens of millions" of U.S. citizens. According to
USA Today, these phone records were provided by several telecom companies such as
AT&T,
Verizon, and
BellSouth. AT&T technician
Mark Klein was later revealed as major source, specifically of rooms at network control centers on the internet backbone intercepting and recording all traffic passing through. In 2008 the security analyst
Babak Pasdar revealed the existence of the so-called "Quantico circuit" that he and his team had set up in 2003. The circuit provided the U.S. federal government with a
backdoor into the network of an unnamed wireless provider, which was later independently identified as
Verizon. In 2007, former
Qwest CEO
Joseph Nacchio alleged in court and provided supporting documentation that in February 2001 (nearly 7 months prior to the
September 11 attacks) that the NSA proposed in a meeting to conduct blanket phone spying. He considered the spying to be illegal and refused to cooperate, and claims that the company was punished by being denied lucrative contracts.
2010–2013 In 2011 details of the
mass surveillance industry were released by
WikiLeaks. According to
Julian Assange, "We are in a world now where not only is it theoretically possible to record nearly all telecommunications traffic out of a country, all telephone calls, but where there is an
international industry selling the devices now to do it." == Disclosures since 2013 ==