Anyone watched 'Enemy of the State'?<p>Yeah... people have known the NSA and other intelligence outfits to be doing everything they can to get information since forever.<p>Think of ECHELON[1]. That's been recording a LOT of data for a long time. I think it's basically a wiretap, simply speaking (please correct me if I'm wrong). So they've been 'hacking' (more like intercepting) communications for a damn long time. You'd be stupid or very naive to think otherwise.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON</a>
Haven't read the article, but I can say from just the title that the answer is "We did". When you saturate legitimate signals with lots of noise you inevitably conceal the obvious. This is what has been happening in the conspiracy theory circles and it's why no one listened when exactly these issues were detailed.