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bupkus

(1,981 posts)
37. You can read much more about this at this link
Mon May 7, 2012, 08:46 PM
May 2012

To this Wired News article from the Ides of March 2012:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be 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, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency’s very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.


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0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

sick! fascisthunter May 2012 #1
And all the emails you've sent in the past will receive a complementary Mormon baptism. tanyev May 2012 #2
BWAHAHAHAHA Generic Other May 2012 #8
!!! LadyHawkAZ May 2012 #16
What happens if we start listing fake ancestors? aquart May 2012 #46
As long as they're baptized, it doesn't matter. n/t cynatnite May 2012 #52
If your message is really important you just send a raven. jp11 May 2012 #3
Dark wings dark words. white_wolf May 2012 #30
settle down. sensible woodchucks know if ya haven't done anything wrong, ya got nothing to worry KG May 2012 #4
When I told a woodchuck co-worker about this, IDemo May 2012 #13
Attention conservatives: this is your big fucking government!!!! Initech May 2012 #5
Can they crack word substitution? Auggie May 2012 #6
They just use a simple grammar checker fer that... don't ya know Agony May 2012 #10
Well, you'd have to change "North Tower" too ... Auggie May 2012 #48
Why are we letting our government do this shit to us? whatchamacallit May 2012 #7
It is not "our" government anymore and hasn't been for some time. nt PufPuf23 May 2012 #21
Good point whatchamacallit May 2012 #24
No democratic republic can long endure without an informed citizenry. Selatius May 2012 #29
They gonna do spellcheck and correct our grammar too? Generic Other May 2012 #9
Time to buy some carrier pigeons Autumn May 2012 #11
massive DURec KG May 2012 #12
This image will be on a plaque outside the entrance: IDemo May 2012 #14
That's not the face that's taking away our rights NOW... FiveGoodMen May 2012 #20
True, maybe just the words since that's been the sentiment for a decade.. IDemo May 2012 #22
I for one welcome our new NSA overlords! Rex May 2012 #15
I would like to read more about this. NCTraveler May 2012 #17
I don't recall any citizenship questions when I signed up for my email account. bluedigger May 2012 #31
Why would there be a citizenship question on your email account. nt. NCTraveler May 2012 #35
So the government would know to stay out of it? bluedigger May 2012 #36
Really? NCTraveler May 2012 #38
You said you were okay with it if it was for non-citizens. bluedigger May 2012 #43
You can read much more about this at this link bupkus May 2012 #37
Thank you. nt. NCTraveler May 2012 #40
You're welcome. Enjoy the very frightening article. nt bupkus May 2012 #42
But computer algorithms couldn't POSSIBLY make a mistake kenny blankenship May 2012 #18
The good news... progressoid May 2012 #19
Everyone should install PGP or GPG, or at least learn Navajo slackmaster May 2012 #23
what if a file was encrypted twice. KCS72000 May 2012 #63
You may be right. I don't grok cryptology. slackmaster May 2012 #64
Read ALL of them? Good luck with that! Odin2005 May 2012 #25
Hey, I was told that the US should become more like Cuba. joshcryer May 2012 #26
I'll have to make mine ultra-ultra boring then Turbineguy May 2012 #27
They're spying on us to protect our freedoms. Kinda like screwing for chastity. Tierra_y_Libertad May 2012 #28
I actually don't send out so many emails usrname May 2012 #32
Good! Let 'em have all the spam! Better yet... longship May 2012 #33
Interesting davidthegnome May 2012 #34
Jam their system. Make sure you have the "bad words" in every email you send. Zalatix May 2012 #39
If this is a federal initiative. NCTraveler May 2012 #41
Good, they can hire a biliion monkeys to read them all too. bemildred May 2012 #44
Loyalty Quotient and Terror Quotient will be assigned to each citizen/ resident by computer. kenny blankenship May 2012 #58
Bring it. nt bemildred May 2012 #60
I pity the fool that has to read mine... BiggJawn May 2012 #45
This is what happens when we keep pretending everything is okay woo me with science May 2012 #47
Secrecy is a funny business. Robb May 2012 #49
STELLAR WIND: NSA program spied on "hundreds of millions" of Americans, says Thomas Drake jakeXT May 2012 #50
IMO Mr Dixon May 2012 #51
You're right about that. EFerrari May 2012 #55
Didn't we use to have something called the Fourth Amendment? Comrade Grumpy May 2012 #53
IMO Mr Dixon May 2012 #54
Top-secret, eh? GeorgeGist May 2012 #56
It is no longer necessary to ask whether fascism is coming. nt BlueIris May 2012 #57
Obviously the solution is to counter LiberalEsto May 2012 #59
Didn't the Xfiles have a season revolve around data collecting? sarcasmo May 2012 #61
One way to mess them up DFW May 2012 #62
They can read mine if they want, but that's got to be the worst job in the world bhikkhu May 2012 #65
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