 |
|
| Hobby Forum Index » Sport - Cricket » NSA Supercenters to Store Americans' Private Data... |
|
Page 1 of 1 |
|
| Author |
Message |
| NSA TORTURE TECHNOLOGY, NEWS and RESEARCH... |
 Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 2:41 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/2177-nsa-supercenters-to-store-americans-private-data-permanently
NSA Supercenters to Store Americans' Private Data Permanently
Written by Thomas R. Eddlem
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 08:30
The National Security Agency is building huge new storage facilities to
store the unconstitutionally gained data on the American people's telephone
calls and Internet traffic permanently, including new buildings in suburban
Salt Lake City, Utah, and San Antonio, Texas.
The NSA has been keeping permanent records of all American's telephone call
habits and Internet traffic since shortly after September 11, 2001,
according to major news reports, without the constitutionally required
warrants from a court.
No longer able to store all the intercepted phone calls and e-mail in its
Ft. Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is engaging in its own housing
boom. How much data will these giant, multibillion dollar new facilities
hold? According to James Bamford of the New York Review of Books, the
facility in Utah alone could hold data that will be measured in Yottabytes.
Never heard of Yottabytes? You're not alone. Most computers sold at stores
still measure their storage at gigabytes, or billions of bits of data. A few
store a terrabyte of information, or one trillion bits of information.
That's 1,000,000,000,000 pieces of information. Yottabytes is the highest
number that has yet been named in computer information. The number is
septillions of billions of bits of data, or
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits of data.
In his review of Matthew M. Aid's new book on the NSA, The Secret Sentry:
The Untold History of the National Security Agency, Bamford noted that the
NSA assault on the Constitution's Fourth Amendment has taken place without
public opposition or even public debate. "Unlike the British government,
which, to its great credit, allowed public debate on the idea of a central
data bank," Bamford wrote, "the NSA obtained the full cooperation of much of
the American telecom industry in utmost secrecy after September 11." And
when the British government held that debate, the people rose up against
such a "big brother"-style plan:
When the plans were released by the UK government, there was an immediate
outcry from both the press and the public, leading to the scrapping of the
"big brother database," as it was called. In its place, however, the
government came up with a new plan. Instead of one vast, centralized
database, the telecom companies and Internet service providers would be
required to maintain records of all details about people's phone, e-mail,
and Web-browsing habits for a year and to permit the government access to
them when asked. That has led again to public anger and to a protest by the
London Internet Exchange, which represents more than 330 telecommunications
firms.
Not so in America, where economically challenged communities are welcoming
the multibillion dollar construction work to create the facilities. Freedom
can be traded for temporary prosperity, according to local officials in
Utah, as reported by a news segment on KSL, Salt Lake City's NBC affiliate.
"The data center is estimated to be 1 million square feet, sitting on
200-acres, and it couldn't come at a better time for Utah's economy," KSL
reported, and will cost taxpayers nearly $2 billion. The report went on to
enthuse that "even Congressman Jason Chaffetz is excited. From Washington he
told KSL News: 'It's a benefit to our economy and our national security.'"
In San Antonio, the NSA is dramatically expanding an existing facility
rather than creating a new one. San Antonio Current writer Greg M. Schwartz
explained how the expanded facility would be 470,000 square feet, almost the
size of the Alamodome. Schwartz revealed that San Antonio officials actually
courted the NSA, sending trade delegations to Ft. Meade to win the
expansion. "The new facility is a potential boon to the local economy since
it's reportedly going to employ around 1,500 people," Schwartz noted, "but
questions remain about whether there will be adequate oversight to prevent
civil-rights violations like Uncle Sam's recent notorious warrantless
wiretapping program." Actually, there's no honest question about that.
Schwartz is just politely saying in journalistic kant that, like Salt Lake
City, San Antonio expects to profit from the destruction of the
Constitution's Bill of Rights. Temporarily, anyway.
Schwartz got a personal dose of the destruction of the Bill of Rights while
preparing his story for the San Antonio Current. "Readers are advised not to
take any photos unless you care to be detained for at least a 45-minute
interrogation by the National Security Agency, as this reporter was,"
Schwartz wrote. The security guards asked, but did not demand, that Schwartz
destroy photos he had taken of the facility.
They didn't take his camera - this time, that is.
Of course, if the NSA is free to ignore one part of the Bill of Rights, the
Fourth Amendment prohibition on searches without court warrants and probable
cause, what security can Americans have in preventing the NSA from ignoring
the other parts of the Constitution . such as freedom of the press under the
First Amendment?
.................................................................
Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:16 am
|
|