When did you learn that the NSA was listening in on American citizens?

I was … shocked to learn the NSA for years had been doing warrantless eavesdropping — exactly contrary to what I insisted they were doing, what I thought [agency director Lt. Gen. Michael] Hayden wouldn't do.- JAMES BAMFORD

clipped from blog.wired.com No outsider has spent more time tracking the labyrinthine ways of the National Security Agency than James Bamford. But even he gets lost in the maze. Despite countless articles and three books on the U.S. government's super-secret, signals-intelligence service — the latest of which, The Shadow Factory, is out today — Bamford tells Danger Room that he was caught off guard by revelations that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans. He remains confused about how the country's telecommunications firms were co-opted into the warrantless spying project. And he's still only guessing, he admits, at the breadth and depth of those domestic surveillance efforts.