The National Security Agency (NSA) is building what will be the nation’s largest spy center in the little town of Bluffdale, Utah in order to store and analyze all electronic communication according to Wired .
The Utah Data Center, as it is being called, is already employing thousands of workers in its construction. The data center will be more than five times the size of the nation’s capitol.
Rob Moore, president of Big-D Construction, one of the three major contractors working on the project, told a local reporter:
“We’ve been asked not to talk about the project.”
Plans include a $10 million antiterrorism protection program, a fence designed to stop a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling 50 miles per hour, closed-circuit cameras, a biometric identification system, a vehicle inspection facility, and a visitor-control center.
The center is scheduled to be in operation by September 2013.
The main purpose of the data center is to intercept and analyze electronic communications both foreign and domestic including the complete contents of private emails, cellphone calls, and Google searches, as well as personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases.
The center will be in many ways much like the Total Information Awareness program created during the first term of the Bush administration, which was crushed by Congress in response to heavy opposition from the public.
According to an anonymous top official quoted in the story:
“Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
The NSA’s code-breaking ability enables it to break through encryption systems employed both by governments around the world and by average computer users in the United States.
Do you think this is a breach of privacy or something that should be allowed for the security against the possibility of foreign/domestic terrorism?
