NSA building massive spy 'data center,' tracking all private communication

Thursday, March 29, 2012 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: NSA, data center, spying

(NaturalNews) Regular readers of NaturalNews know that we've been busy of late keeping track of your privacy in this Information Age, which is not easy considering all of the entities - public and private - who want to know everything these days about you and what you are doing 24/7/365.

But that's impossible, right? No one could monitor everyone's communications 24 hours a day in real-time. Well, maybe not yet, but soon, very soon, the National Security Agency (NSA) will be able to - just as soon as they get the facility built.

Nestled in the heart of Mormon country in Utah, the NSA has an army of workers cleared all the way up to TOP SECRET presently constructing a facility that will be five times larger than the U.S. Capitol, for the purposes of "secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world's telecommunications networks," Wired.com reported.

So big is this new spy complex, in fact, that the town where it is located - Bluffdale - had to be enlarged.

More than just 'a data center'

The NSA is already one of the world's largest spy agencies, if not the biggest. And this new super-secret facility, which is scheduled to begin operation in September 2013, is only going to give the agency much more capability than it already has.

Called the Utah Data Center, the nondescript name shouldn't fool you. Once complete, according to reports, the center will be able to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store incredible amounts of data gathered from the world over, grabbing communications as they beam down from satellites and race through underground and undersea cables domestically and overseas.

And by communications, that means all forms of communication - cell phone calls, private emails, Internet searches - you name it. In fact, the center will be able to track "all sorts of personal data trails -- parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter,'" Wired.com said.

In some ways, the "total information awareness" program created during George W. Bush's first term, will come to fruition in the Utah Data Center. But that program was squelched by Congress in 2003 out of concern - you guessed it - that such a system could wantonly and regularly be misused by those in power to invade personal privacy.

'Everybody's a target'

Having said that, "this is more than just a data center," one senior intel official formerly tied to the project told Wired.com. The facility will have a far more secret role of breaking codes - a capability that, until now, has gone unannounced.

That's dramatically important, the official says, because much of the data the center will intercept - bank and stock transactions, financial information, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents and personal, confidential communications - will all be heavily encrypted.

And here's another creepy detail: Years ago the NSA made a huge breakthrough in its ability to break unbelievably complex encryption systems employed by governments and average computer users in the U.S. alike. A separate top official involved in the program said the upshot of developing that capability was, "Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."

This capability came at a time when the NSA's budgets were swollen in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. In fact, in the aftermath of the attacks the 9/11 Commission faulted what it called the fragmented and poorly coordinated U.S. intelligence apparatus as, in large part, being responsible for those attacks and a series of other terror bombings in the previous decade.

"The vision of central coordination has not been realized," the report - which was heavily critical of the CIA and the FBI - said.

Some were also critical of NSA after the agency failed to detect the first World Trade Center attack in 1993; the twin U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998; the attack against the U.S.S. Cole warship in Yemen in 2000; and, of course, 9/11.

The Utah Data Center, is being built to fulfill a total information vision held by some in government who believe it's Washington's right and responsibility to protect and defend the country at any cost, even if it means trampling the Constitution.

Obviously, we don't agree.

And not everyone agrees with us. Fair enough; read this rebuttal from Forbes magazine here and decide for yourself.

Keep this in mind, however. William Binney, a senior NSA crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network, says this about the agency he spent 40 years with: "We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

http://www.forbes.com

http://articles.cnn.com