NSA Star Trek Command Room Modeled After Enterprise, Picard Is Not Amused
A NSA Star Trek command room was professionally modeled by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, accusations of NSA spying have spread to South America. Now they’re spreading to a galaxy far, far away. (Oops, wrong series.)
The existence of a Star Trek NSA command room was revealed recently during an interview with people working underneath NSA Director Keith Alexander, who took over running the National Security Agency in 2005. He used to be the general in charge of the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Although, the Star Trek NSA room was apparently built in 1998, which was before his time there.
Fort Belvoir featured the NSA Star Trek command room inside a facility known as the Information Dominance Center, which is essentially a cyber war room. Mimicking the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, the NSA Star Trek command room comes complete with chrome panels, computer stations, and a huge view screen on the forward wall. The doors of the NSA Star Trek room even make a “whoosh” sound when they slide open and shut.
The center of the NSA Star Trek command is focused on a a leather “captain’s chair” which stands alone. Alexander apparently loves science-fiction movies and would show off the NSA’s spying tools on the forward viewing screen. An unnamed retired officer says, “Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard.”
NSA Spying: Make It So, Number One
So would Captain Picard be amused by the NSA Star Trek command room? The reaction might be similar to the Star Trek crew watching the Miley Cyrus performance at the VMAs.
Intelligence officials remember how Alexander had been building advanced data-mining software and analytic tools during his time at the army. Alexander allegedly wanted access to the raw data from the NSA, which included way too much information about the average US citizen. The previous NSA Director shot Alexander down since it was deemed to be unconstitutional. According to people who worked underneath him, Alexander once said a “lot of things aren’t clearly legal, but that doesn’t make them illegal.”
To give you an idea of how much NSA spying has grown under Alexander’s command, the agency estimates that 1.6 percent of all internet data is scanned by NSA computers, which is about 50 percent more than Google does in a day. NSA spying includes recording and storing phone records and monitoring 75 percent of all internet traffic in the United States. Worse, the new NSA spying program includes efforts to break encryption technologies used by individuals, corporations, and governments all over the world.
The NSA PRISM spying program uses unwilling corporate proxies like Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft to gain access to their raw data. NSA PRISM can access everyone’s e-mails, video chats, and messages sent through social media. The PRISM program has been fully authorized by the Obama administration, with the supposed purpose being to sift through every US citizen’s data to find any information on terrorists operating within the homeland.
How Star Trek Disagrees With The NSA
Star Trek: The Next Generation happens to feature an episode called The Pegasus that can be compared to the NSA spying. A rogue Admiral in the Federation temporarily took command of the Enterprise and got Picard and crew involved in covering up an unauthorized spying program that violated a treaty with the Romulan Empire. The argument was that the Federation needed to be proactively spying on others in order to protect itself. The Admiral was involved in developing illegal technology and eventually Picard uncovered the plot, which ended with the Admiral and several other conspirators being arrested.
What do you think about the NSA Star Trek command room?
