The SNOWDEN of the 70s

Perry Fellwock, also known by his online pseudonym, Winslow Peck, is a former NSA analyst who gained notoriety in the 1970s for blowing the whistle on the agency's surveillance network called ECHELON.

ECHELON was originally established in the early 1960s to monitor military and diplomatic communications from the Soviet Union-and its allies during the Cold War.

In 1971, Fellwock provided a trove of documents to journalist Ron Rosenbaum, detailing the agency's involvement in intercepting and decoding communications from governments, corporations, and even private individuals .

Fellwock's revelations about the agency, which was then shrouded in secrecy, included information that it had a budget larger than that of the CIA. Following Fellwock's admissions, the U.S. Senate introduced legislation in 1973 that successfully prohibited the NSA from conducting surveillance on American citizens.