Exposed: Massive New Spy Center Built to Track Your Emails and Phone Calls
The following is a transcript of a Democracy Now! segment on revelations that the NSA is building a massive new spy center.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A new exposé in Wired Magazine has revealed new details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program codenamed "Stellar Wind." According to investigative reporter James Bamford, the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes 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."
AMY GOODMAN: In addition, the NSA has also created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. James Bamford writes the secret surveillance program "is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration," but later killed by Congress in 2003 due to privacy concerns and public outcry.
James Bamford joins us now from London, England. His article in Wired is called "The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)." Jim Bamford is an investigative journalist who’s been covering the National Security Agency for the last three decades. He came close to standing trial after revealing the NSA’s operations in an explosive 1982 book called The Puzzle Palace. His latest book is the last in his trilogy on the NSA; it’s called The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
http://www.alternet.org/story/154641/Exposed%3A_Massive_New_Spy_Center_Built_to_Track_Your_Emails_and_Phone_Calls/?page=1
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