I remember people in infosec and *NIX communities being paranoid about the NSA back in the early '00s. Americans who were not trusting their own government. I myself only heard about the CIA and FBI. I familiarized myself with the concept of NSA and shrugged it off. "Never hear anything about those. Probably a very small organization..."

In hindsight, I was right, but I didn't get with the program after 9/11 (see the accounts of William Binney [1] and Edward Snowden's recently Permanent Record).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o...