(NEW YORK) MintPress — When The New York Times dropped the bombshell in December, 2005 that President George W. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans and other people inside the U.S. to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants usually required for domestic spying, the nation was stunned.
The mission of the NSA, which is part of the Department of Defense (DOD), is to spy on communications abroad.
At the time, Bush administration officials said the operation was needed so the NSA could move quickly to monitor information that may disclose threats to the U.S. and that safeguards were in place to protect the privacy and civil liberties of American citizens.
Now, it seems that under President Barack Obama, despite his criticism of Bush’s unwarranted wiretapping, the NSA is taking things one step further.
Vast new facility
Wired published a long expose last week about the NSA’s $2 billion spy center in the remote valley of Bluffdale, Utah, which is now under construction and scheduled to open in 18 months.
“A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade,” revealed bestselling author and journalist James Bamford, who helped uncover the NSA’s existence in the 1980s. “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.”
He continues, “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.”
Bamford maintains that the NSA now has the capability to spy on U.S. citizens via all of their phone conversations and email exchanges.
The facility “is the most covert and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever,” he contends.
NSA denies allegations
According to Bamford, the joke that “NSA” stands for “Never Say Anything” is more apt than ever.
In fact, Bamford’s piece in Wired led to the grilling of NSA chief General Keith Alexander on Tuesday by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) at a budget hearing in the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee.
Historically, notes Bamford, the NSA’s response when confronted with eavesdropping issues has been to deny or evade the questions. On Tuesday, when asked whether the NSA has the capability of monitoring the communications of Americans, Alexander never denied it, but said repeatedly that the NSA can’t do it “in the United States.” Meaning it can monitor them from satellites, undersea cables or from countries such as Canada and Britain.
Interestingly, neither Johnson nor Alexander got Bamford’s name right.
David vs. Goliath
Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have long questioned the NSA’s practice of eavesdropping on Americans but, not surprisingly, they haven’t gotten far.
Whistleblowers for their part have often found themselves out of a job or, even worse, facing prison time. Former NSA employee Thomas Drake, whom the Obama administration tried and failed to prosecute for leaking information about waste, fraud and abuse at the agency, said Obama is “worse than Bush” when it comes to tolerance for whistleblowing.
“I actually voted for Obama. It’s all rhetoric for me now,” he acknowledged. “ As Americans we were hoodwinked. He’s expanding the secrecy regime far beyond what the Bush administration even intended, interestingly enough. I think Bush is probably like, ‘Whoa.’”
Now that Alexander has spoken in public, though, Bamford thinks it’s time for the NSA to come clean. “Let Congress call on an open panel where whistleblowers…give sworn testimony,” he said. “And NSA, at last, responds fully concerning its domestic involvement.”
Source: MintPress