How many Americans know that as of September 2013, all of us engaged in any form of communication will be subject — with the approval of President Barack Obama and the silence of Congress — to continuous tracking and databasing by the National Security Agency?
As I reported here last week, the NSA’s massive new center in Bluffdale, Utah — more than five times larger than the U.S. Capitol — will be storing and analyzing:
“All forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases… ” (“The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say),” James Bamford, wired.com, March 15).
Are you at all concerned? Note that this bottomless database is deceptively called the Utah Data Center (UDC), as if it were a minor league state agency. But journalist-historian James Bamford, as he has done in previous reports and books, breaks into the NSA’s deep secrecy.
Dig this: “The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed.”
Citing a senior intelligence official formerly involved in this endless spying, Bamford reports that the NSA is now also expert in breaking codes.
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