The conspiracy theory is a bit more complex. The NSA has two programs for upstream collection prior to 9/11 2001. THINTHREAD and STELLARWIND. THINTHREAD was de

The conspiracy theory is a bit more complex. The NSA has two programs for upstream collection prior to 9/11 2001. THINTHREAD and STELLARWIND. THINTHREAD was designed by long time NSA personnel to protect privacy while providing comparable digital surveillance capability to ECHELEON's capability in the analogue world. STELLARWIND was the full take and archive program. The White House chose the lower privacy technology, forced the people involved in THINTHREAD into retirement and then prosecuted the whistleblowers. Covered in depth here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-sec...