INTRODUCTION: We've been marking the moment one year ago when the world began to learn the extent of the massive secret electronic surveillance programs centered at the U.S. National Security Agency. Internal documents were leaked by Edward Snowden, but before him there were others who had tried to raise the alarm years earlier. Our Washington Correspondent Daniel Ryntjes has been speaking to them....
IN: Yes, Edward Snowden...
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Yes, Edward Snowden will go down in history for opening up the doors of the electronic surveillance state.
But if we had listened to former NSA crypto-mathematician William Binney, then it would not have come as a surprise.
Over a decade ago he was the key architect of a software system "ThinThread" designed to sift computer and phone metadata.
SOUNDBITE: William Binney, Former Cryptanalyst, National Security Agency
"The whole idea was to try to design a program that could look be able to look into terabytes of data passing by in the digital age and look into it and see what was important to pull out and sort out for the analysts to analyze."
As the NSA's technical leader for intelligence, Binney objected when privacy protections in the software were taken out, shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Believing they had violated the U.S. Constitution, he and colleague Kirk Wiebe resigned, then attempting to convince the U.S. Congress, the Justice Department and even Chief Justice John Roberts to take action.
With no success, they turned to journalists, prompting efforts to prosecute them on spying charges. Public opinion however was left largely unchanged.
J. Kirk Wiebe, Retired Senior Analyst, NSA
"They didn’t take us seriously because it was just us saying it, it was our words in front of a camera or with a newspaper reporter. No documents. No evidence. And there’s a normal human desire to believe that those who are running your country, those who are in charge of defence for example, how could they do something so wrong? Wouldn’t they do the right thing? And we all believed that. I believed it."
They say Edward Snowden decided to steal documents and flee the country because of their lack of success.
WILLIAM BINNEY, FORMER NSA PROGRAMMER
"What Snowden did was make it impossible for the govt to deny what they were doing, because he took the documentation they were using to brief the programs they were running inside their organisations. So it’s impossible for them to deny that they’re doing it."
Former NSA Senior Executive Thomas Drake is another member of this group.
"People are now in some cases re-discovering or discovering for the first time what happened to me and others and that we were talking about this years before Snowden was ever known or had come forward."
Drake also fought off criminal prosecution after raising concerns internally, resigning and turning to the media.
Thomas Drake, Former Senior Executive, National Security Agency
"The difference in terms of surveillance and the extraordinary disclosures of Edward Snowden is that we're finally having a debate that we've never had before. So, I'm encouraged by, at least we're having a conversation."
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