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But it wasn't secret. The narrative has been out there for ages but covered in disinformation so you can't see it properly. The disinformation caused people to see it as ridiculous, as was intended, so they ignored previous government whistleblowers with the same story.

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Yup. There was information about the NSA's Echelon program floating around for decades before Snowden. Check out the Public Disclosures section of this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

Despite multiple whistleblowers dating back to 1972, no one took it seriously until the Snowden leaks confirmed it without any doubt. For forty years this information remained below the surface.

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