NSA Builds the Biggest Spy Center

[Rayaan]

[Cato]

Located deep in the Utah desert, it is the world's largest and most secretive surveillance center designed by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Utah? I think you're confusing the NSA with the Mormon posthumous baptism database.

[Dragonetti]

The Mormons do spy on their own like Scientology!

[Rayaan]

Utah? I think you're confusing the NSA with the Mormon posthumous baptism database.

It's not a Mormon baptism database anymore, though. Now it has transformed into a spying bat cave.


Speaking of spying, I read that the NSA can locate where you are by secretly tracking your cell phones - even when they are turned off.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html
http://rt.com/usa/nsa-cell-phone-tracking-436
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2013072...tion.shtml


Also, Facebook released a report which revealed that government agencies have made thousands and thousands of data requests about certain Facebook users from around the world in just the first 6 months of 2013. You can read about this at the articles below.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/..._data.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...60483.html

[Dragonetti]

The phone is never truly off until the battery is removed. That is part of the safety system for emergency 911. So, the tracking is in the name of safety, and the data was there before the agency requested it.

[Rayaan]

You're probably right. I didn't know that cell phones are not truly off unless you take out the batteries ... d'oh.


Also, the NSA has conspired with many tech companies to include bugs and back doors on much of internet encryption, so that they can eavesdrop.

Here's more on that.

The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.

The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.

Many users assume — or have been assured by Internet companies — that their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own “back door” in all encryption, it set out to accomplish the same goal by stealth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa...wanted=all

[Minimalist]

[Dragonetti]

That is the charter for the agency. To create and break encryption. Well, the latest encryption is damn nearly impossible to breaking in a timely matter. So, force people to put in back doors.

[Jackalope]

That is the charter for the agency. To create and break encryption. Well, the latest encryption is damn nearly impossible to breaking in a timely matter. So, force people to put in back doors.

Yes, that is true - it is also part of their charter that they are no allowed to spy on people within the U.S. Yet, it is apparent that they are.

[Captain Colostomy]

Stockpiling succotash and 9mm rounds now. *checks tin hat for pin holes*