Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that which describes itself as a leading provider of management and technology services to "government clients in defense, intelligence, and the civil sectors." Yet Booz Allen Hamilton is just one of many private contractors; other prominent examples include Palantir Technologies Inc, i2, and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), working for the government in the intelligence sector, with a massive 70% of the U.S. intelligence budget currently going to such firms.

Although the extent of the government's use of private contractors has been known since at least 2007, the current NSA surveillance scandal has again raised concerns about the growing outsourcing of government work in the defense and intelligence sectors to corporations and the unaccountable use of taxpayers' money to spy on them.