democracynow.org – A new exposé in Wired Magazine reveals details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind.” democracy now speaks with investigative reporter James Bamford who says the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital “pocket litter.” “The NSA has constantly denied that they’re doing things and then it turns out they are doing things,” Bamford says in response to NSA Director General Keith Alexander’s denial yesterday that the U.S. citizens’ phone calls and emails are being intercepted. “A few years ago, President Bush said before a camera that the United States is not eavesdropping on anybody without a warrant. And then it turns out that we had this exposure to all of the warrantless eavesdropping in the New York Times article. You have this constant denial in terms and parsing of words.”
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