There's too much history to dig through for a detailed answer.
The NSA program was well known for ages. Remember the infamous closet in SF?:
Snowden's "revelation" about NSA metadata and the like was in 2013.
Just because J Random Judge didn't know about it doesn't mean that there wasn't oversight in the courts and in the Congress about it. Note that while court cases have demanded changes to the programs, they are still going on because Congress and the President have determined that they're needed.
I put "whistleblower" in quotes because the story at the start of the thread used it incessantly.
Gotta run. HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006.[1][2]
[...]
On August 15, 2007, the case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was dismissed on December 29, 2011 based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.[7] A different case by the EFF was filed on September 18, 2008, titled Jewel v. NSA.
Snowden's "revelation" about NSA metadata and the like was in 2013.
Just because J Random Judge didn't know about it doesn't mean that there wasn't oversight in the courts and in the Congress about it. Note that while court cases have demanded changes to the programs, they are still going on because Congress and the President have determined that they're needed.
I put "whistleblower" in quotes because the story at the start of the thread used it incessantly.
Gotta run. HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.