The NSA wiretapping story nobody wanted
Whistleblower Mark Klein tells in his new book of how he was ignored. He spoke with IDG News. … Following is an edited transcript of the interview. — IDG News Service: By some estimates there are 15 to 20 of these secret wiretapping rooms across the country.
Context & Ripple Effects
Mark Klein's book arrives while the warrantless-wiretapping debate that flared through late 2007 is still unresolved, and it reframes that fight as an institutional-failure story: a whistleblower who says his disclosures went nowhere. His stated estimate of 15 to 20 secret wiretapping rooms across the country gives the argument its most concrete number to date.
The NSA's credibility problem predates this book. A rumor circulating since November 2007 — never confirmed — held that the agency embedded a backdoor in an encryption standard, and a FOIA request filed in September 2008 sought NSA-Google contract records precisely because official channels weren't producing answers. Even a 2005 AP finding that the NSA's own website set tracking cookies fed the same running argument about the agency and privacy.
First-order effects
- Klein's account hands journalists and researchers a named, on-the-record source for the secret-room claims, putting the NSA in the position of answering for facilities it has not acknowledged.
- The IDG News transcript pushes the 15-to-20-room estimate into circulation as a specific, checkable figure rather than an anonymous assertion.
Second-order effects
- FOIA requests become the default verification path for claims the agency will not confirm — the channel already tried in September 2008 against NSA-Google records — so expect more filings aimed at corroborating or refuting Klein.
- Klein's central complaint, that he was ignored, becomes ammunition for advocates pressing formal handling rules for whistleblowers who report classified-program wrongdoing.
Third-order effects
- If whistleblower-published accounts keep outpacing official declassification, surveillance accountability shifts structurally from agency statements to books, transcripts, and records requests — making agencies' silence itself the news peg.
- Each unconfirmed suspicion layered onto the record, like the 2007 encryption-backdoor rumor, compounds into a durable trust problem for NSA-linked cryptography and intercept infrastructure that no single denial resolves.
The trend: Oversight of domestic surveillance is migrating from official disclosure toward whistleblower testimony and FOIA-driven verification, with the NSA's refusal to confirm becoming the story's engine.