Spying on Americans: A Center 5 Times Larger Than Washington, D.C.
The National Security Agency’s spy center is gigantic. It’s located in Utah, where few people will ever see it.
The NSA is far more secretive than the CIA. It is known in Washington as “No Such Agency.” The NSA got most of this huge complex built before any magazine or newspaper reported on it. The fact that the NSA could pull this off before anyone found out about it is more disturbing than the fact that the NSA built it.
The center is five times the size of Washington, D.C.
The first major report on this came from Wired Magazine in March. James Bamford, the NSA’s nemesis, wrote it.
The center’s official purpose is to break codes. The more important questions are these: (1) Whose codes? (2) Why?
The Soviet Union is long gone? The Taliban is in Afghanistan. Red China is lending the U.S. government money, or was until last July. Who is the enemy?
Maybe you and I are.
Several years ago the NSA made a major leap in breaking complex encryptions used in everything from “financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications.”
The head of the NSA said that the NSA will not spy on Americans.
The story caused such a stir that the NSA’s chief General Keith Alexander was called before Congress last week to testify about the project and categorically denied the facility will be used to spy on American citizens. “We’re not authorized to do that, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to collect that kind of information.”
Not officially, anyway.
Congress has no authority over the NSA other than to cut its budget. It never does.
NSA public information officer Vanee’ Vines backed up Alexander in an email saying: “What it will be is a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the Intelligence Community’s efforts to further strengthen and protect the nation.”
That blanket covers the entire spy networks of every nation.
It’s Big Brother. It always has been.
Former NSA analyst Adrienne J. Kinne told Bamford the NSA has had the ability to listen in on American phone calls in real time since 9/11 when, she said, “basically all the rules were thrown out the window.”The eavesdropping Kinne was involved in even included listening to U.S. journalists calling home from overseas.
“A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations. It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary.”
Yet it’s ultimately all nonsense. The government cannot trace the vast bulk of this information. That is because people must listen. People must evaluate. People must then take decisive action. Government employees do not want to take any action, let alone decisive action. They want high salaries with no personal risk. That’s what NSA gives them.
This is a boondoggle. They never end.
Continue reading on businessinsider.com.
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Published on April 5, 2012. The original is here.
There have been almost no stories on this facility since 2016. Most stories appeared in 2013. That was the year Edward Snowden blew the whistle and fled to Russia. His revelations had no visible effect on the spying programs.
The system is untouchable politically.