NSA Spying on its citizens?

The fact that the NSA is building a massive data collection warehouse in the Midwest is not news, but American citizens do not feel more secure with the knowledge that the national security agency is monitoring billions of emails, phone calls and texts, in cooperation with Google and Facebook and is threatening to invade their privacy.

According to an article in the Wired, post-9/11 NSA “has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created,” a bastion of unconstitutional privacy violations and warrant-less wiretapping.

But is the NSA’s new spy center will be really watching you?

Once finished, the NSA’s million square foot data center will be the size of 17 football fields, five times the size of the U.S. Capitol Building and 18 times bigger than the White House, reported Fox News.

“Many allegations have been made about the planned activities of the Utah Data Center,” NSA public information officer Vanee’ Vines wrote in an email, according to Fox News.

“What it will be is a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the Intelligence Community’s efforts to further strengthen and protect the nation. NSA is the executive agent for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and will be the lead agency at the center,” she said.

But Wired Magazine says differently, “this is more than just a data center,” one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program, told the media. “The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes.”

Apparently, code-breaking will be a crucial component for the analysis of the information, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, and confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted, argue experts.

Wired claims that according to other government officials involved in the process, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its capability to crypt-analyze or break, impenetrably and intricate encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US.

According to this official: “Everybody is a target. Everybody with communication is a target.”