No one should be surprised by any massive level of spying by the National Security Agency, (NSA) or any admissions coming from that agency about additional surveillance of Americans. In fact, whatever is revealed by NSA personnel, such as happened today in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, should be considered just the tip of the iceberg and not definitive in scope.
NSA deputy director Chris Inglis admitted that the surveillance of Americans by his agency was far more intense and intrusive than previously revealed, and that much more citizen’s data is being looked at by government than indicated in the past.
Inglis’s statement described that the NSA was using what he referred to as “three hops” in gathering data. This has not been admitted to before now. That means that when a person is targeted for spying, all calls to and from any he had spoken with would be captured, the first hop, then all calls to and from the second person, and all calls to and from the third person would be captured, databased and reviewed. This alone could include most everyone given the proper initial targeting. In fact, from the Atlantic Wire article:
“For a sense of scale, researchers at the University of Milan found in 2011 that everyone on the Internet was, on average, 4.74 steps away from anyone else. The NSA explores relationships up to three of those steps.”
This would all be very revealing and important if this were all that is going on with government surveillance of American citizens. So the NSA has admitted that it tracks friends of friends of friends calls, but what is missing here? That agency, and others, are in reality capturing every single form of communication in this country. Every phone call, every keystroke on computers, every site visited, every email, every social site and much, much more are not only being tracked, but captured and data-based.
Hence the monstrous secret data center being built in Utah by the very same NSA that now admits to more unwarranted surveillance. That center can store all communication data on this planet, and from virtually every single source, for hundreds of years. That certainly is not being built to surveil just friends of friends calls.
William Binney is an ex-NSA mathematician who worked for the NSA for almost 40 years. He had this to say:
Utah’s computers could store data at the rate of 20 terabytes – the equivalent of the Library of Congress – per minute. “Technically it’s not that complicated. You just need to work out an indexing scheme to order it.” The centre could absorb and store data for “hundreds of years” and allow agencies such as the FBI to retroactively use the information.
Any who accept as fact anything said by the NSA or any other government agencies concerning spying on Americans, and foreigners as well, are either completely gullible or naive beyond imagination. This total and blanketed surveillance of all of us is now in place, and is being used to gather everything about everybody. The NSA is capturing all data, so nothing is private and nothing is sacred.
The only thing hidden is the activity of government. There are no secrets except those of government. The U.S. government is wrapped in secrecy while the entire population is continuously watched. A more effective tool for tyranny does not exist!