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发帖数: 29846 | 1 “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
—A senior intelligence official previously involved with the Utah Data
Center
In the small town of Bluffdale, Utah, not far from bustling Salt Lake City,
the federal government is quietly erecting what will be the crown jewel of
its surveillance empire. Rising up out of the desert landscape, the Utah
Data Center (UDC)—a $2 billion behemoth designed to house a network of
computers, satellites, and phone lines that stretches across the world—is
intended to serve as the central hub of the National Security Agency’s vast
spying infrastructure.
Once complete (the UDC is expected to be fully operational by September 2013
), the last link in the chain of the electronic concentration camp that
surrounds us will be complete, and privacy, as we have known it, will be
extinct.
At five times the size of the U.S. Capitol, the UDC will be a clearinghouse
and a depository for every imaginable kind of information—whether innocent
or not, private or public—including communications, transactions and the
like. Anything and everything you’ve ever said or done, from the trivial to
the damning—phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches,
emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll
records, etc.—will be tracked, collected, catalogued and analyzed by the
UDC’s supercomputers and teams of government agents.
In this way, by sifting through the detritus of your once-private life, the
government will come to its own conclusions about who you are, where you fit
in, and how best to deal with you should the need arise.
What little we know about this highly classified spy center—which will be
operated by the National Security Agency (NSA)—comes from James Bamford, a
former intelligence analyst and an expert on the highly secretive government
agency. Bamford’s expose in Wired (March 15, 2012), a must-read for anyone
concerned about the loss of our freedoms in a technological age, provides a
chilling glimpse into the government’s plans for total control, a.k.a.,
total information awareness.
As Bamford notes, the NSA “has transformed itself into the largest, most
covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created. In
the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals
of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus
on the U.S. and its citizens.”
Supposedly created by the NSA in order to track foreign threats to America,
as well as to shore up cybersecurity and battle hackers, the UDC’s
technological capabilities are astounding. As the central depository for all
of the information gathered by the NSA’s vast spy centers, the UDC’s
supercomputers will be capable of downloading data amounting to the entire
contents of the Library of Congress every six hours. However, the data being
targeted goes far beyond the scope of terrorist threats. In fact, as
Bamford points out, the NSA is interested in nothing less than the “so-
called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the
reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, U.S. and
foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between
trusted peers.”
The loss of privacy resulting from such aggressive surveillance systems
highlights very dramatically the growing problem of large public and private
institutions in relation to the individual citizen.
What we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is
the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average
Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats,
technicians and private corporations). The growing need for technicians
necessitates the bureaucracy. The massive bureaucracies—now computerized—
that administer governmental policy are a permanent form of government.
Presidents come and go, but the nonelected bureaucrats remain.
The question looms before us. Can freedom in the United States continue to
flourish and grow in an age when the physical movements, individual
purchases, conversations, and meetings of every citizen are constantly under
surveillance by private companies and government agencies?
Whether or not the surveillance is undertaken for “innocent” reasons, does
not surveillance of all citizens, even the innocent sort, gradually poison
the soul of a nation? Does not surveillance limit personal options—deny
freedom of choice—for many individuals? Does not surveillance increase the
powers of those who are in a position to enjoy the fruits of this activity?
Is not control the name of the game?
We are all becoming data collected in government files. Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, who suffered under the secret police in the Soviet Union,
wrote about this process some years ago:
As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record,
each containing a number of questions…. There are thus hundreds of little
threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these
threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a
spider’s web, and if they materialized like rubber bands, buses and trams
and even people would lose the ability to move and the wind would be unable
to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city.
Thus, we come back to the NSA’s spy center. That the NSA, which has shown
itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, is the driving
force behind this spy center is no surprise. The agency, which is three
times the size of the CIA, consumes one third of the intelligence budget and
has a global spy network, has a long history of spying on Americans—
whether or not it has always had the authorization to do so. Take, for
instance, the warrantless wiretapping program conducted during the Bush
years, which resulted in the NSA monitoring the private communications of
millions of Americans—a program that continues unabated today, with help
from private telecommunications companies such as AT&T. The program recorded
320 million phone calls a day when it first started. It is estimated that
the NSA has intercepted 15 to 20 trillion communications of American
citizens since 9/11.
What has proven to be surprising to some is that the Obama White House has
proven to be just as bad, if not worse, than the Bush White House when it
comes to invading the privacy rights of Americans. As Yale law professor
Jack Balkin notes, “We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and
legitimization of a national-surveillance state. [Obama has] systematically
adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration.”
Unfortunately, whereas those on the Left raised a hew and cry over the Bush
administration’s constant encroachments on Americans’ privacy rights, it
appears that the political leanings of those on the Left have held greater
sway than their principles. Consequently, the Obama administration has faced
much less criticism for its blatant efforts to reinforce the surveillance
state.
Clearly, the age of privacy in America is coming to a close. We have moved
into a new paradigm in which surveillance technology which renders everyone
a suspect is driving the bureaucratic ship that once was our democratic
republic. By the time this UDC spy center is fully operational, no phone
call, no email, no Tweet, no web search is safe from the prying eyes and
ears of the government. People going about their daily business will no
longer be assured that they are not being spied upon by federal agents and
other government bureaucrats.
While the responses to the news of the Bluffdale facility have been varied,
with some Americans cleaving to the over-used government line “if you have
nothing to hide, you have no need to worry,” more and more people are
starting to feel like Mike Newell, a Wired reader who had this to say about
the UDC:
Not very long ago ... I actually believed that I would be willing to
sacrifice a bit of freedom for security. I believed that a guard or cop at
the entrance to my community, checking I.D. would be better than car loads
of gang members roaming through creating havoc. I once laughed at those who
mistrusted the government and prepared for survival, should things go
sideways. I supported efforts by our so called “leaders” to monitor
society, in search for the ever present evil. Not long ago ... I slept.
I just finished building my fourth M-4. I just finished loading my 3rd case
of 5.56. Today my Saiga 12 arrives. My wife has canned enough food to feed a
city. I have taken great steps at a great cost to ensure that I am fully
self reliant under any circumstance. I am awake.
Anyone who really believes that the simple act of discussing this on the
internet, has not steered electronic ears in your direction ... is sound
asleep and I understand that. Someone eluded to it and I repeat this truth.
In 1935 Germany ... many citizens felt uneasy and sensed that doom was on
the way. More laughed such talk off and continued to find reasons to smile
and enjoy the day. We all know the end of that story.
The new iPad was released!!!!! Snooky had a meltdown! My MacPro is awesome!!
! These trinkets that keep us giggling and focused on nothing ... this
addiction to instant gratification ... this will be our downfall.
There’s a storm brewing.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and
president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI
Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@
rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at
www.rutherford.org |
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