In 2013, the Guardian and the Washington Post broke the story of clandestine surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA is supposed to be conducting foreign intelligence operations, but it turns out its reach extended to US shores.

One of the most shocking revelations of these disclosures was that the NSA was engaged in the bulk collection of metadata from domestic US calls. As this program was secret from the public, and intelligence officials had perjured themselves to keep it that way, Americans had no idea the extent to which their own government was spying on them.

As a result of these revelations, Congress passed legislation aimed at reining in the bulk collection of metadata (though the tepid “reforms” ultimately failed to solve the problem). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that same bulk metadata collection to be illegal, and likely unconstitutional. Had the program’s existence not been revealed, the Ninth Circuit would never have known of the existence of the illegal surveillance program.