Some parts of it were a genuine surprise. In he 90’s we learned of differential cryptanalysis and that the NSA’s involvement in DES strengthened it, not backdoo

Some parts of it were a genuine surprise. In he 90’s we learned of differential cryptanalysis and that the NSA’s involvement in DES strengthened it, not backdoored it as everyone thought. Turns out that was the exception not the rule. Likewise although certainly some people in tech knew the extant of PRISM, I think all but he most paranoid infosec people presumed they nevertheless obeyed the law and didn’t dragnet snoop on Americans. I’d heard stories of the backbone interconnects that were routing all traffic through NSA servers. I presumed that was just to get access for when they needed it (with a warrant) or to mask what specific data stream they were interested in. I didn’t take as seriously as I should have the possibility that they were in fact simply recording everything.