"Espionage" Data storage center

In the USA the next scandal connected with illegal invasion of local intelligence agencies into private life of the citizens ripens. The fresh April issue of the Wired magazine can provoke it. On a cover of the edition the mountain against the background of the clear star sky at which foot some huge building is built is represented. Building is conducted by the U.S. National Security Agency (National Security Agency, NSA), and, as it appears from article, there will be here a huge "espionage" center where all information on ordinary Americans — from records of their phone calls before search queries in Google will be flown down. The author of article based on data of sources from NSA — the famous journalist James Bamford. Since the beginning of the 1970th years he wrote four books about NSA and is at the same time both the main chronicler, and the chief critic of the agency.

^[1] That NSA conducts large-scale building in desert neighborhoods of the tiny Mormon town of Blaffdale in the State of Utah (Bluffdale, UT, United States: 40 °26'12.27 "C and 111 °55'50.07" H), is known long ago. According to the official version, it will be the center of cyber security protecting the USA from foreign hackers. Bamford, however, claims that the true purpose of NSA is not so plausible. The journalist draws the gloomy picture realizing the most courageous imaginations of conspiracy theorists.

Two hangars with a total area over 4000 sq.m (see the scheme below) will be heart of the center. They will be from top to bottom forced by the servers capable to store up to one yottabyte of various data. The being CEO of Google Eric Schmidt estimated the volume of all knowledge of mankind approximately at 5 exabytes once, i.e. is 200,000 times less, than will be able to contain the center in Blaffdale. If once the place is filled up to the end, information which is stored there will be equivalent 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 pages of the text. How NSA is going to hammer all this space? Perfect definitely not the public data, Bamford is sure. Much stronger the agency interests that it is under a surface of a World Wide Web or circulates in air in the form of radio signals.

The history NSA began with an attack of the Japanese aircraft on Pearl Harbour. Created as one of divisions of the Pentagon the agency had to prevent repetition of similar incidents, collecting information on plans of enemies of the USA abroad. After on September 11, 2001 the airplanes stolen by Al-Qaeda destroyed towers of the World Trade Center, tasks of NSA began to change gradually. Within the war announced by George Bush's administration against terrorism and on the basis of the well-known "Patriotic act" NSA received large powers on conducting observation within the country. From now on the agency, for example, could eavesdrop on telephone conversations without court's decision if at least one of interlocutors was outside the USA. All this as a result developed into grandiose scandal when the The New York Times newspaper opened that internal calls of millions of Americans were in practice intercepted.

After that amendments were adopted to current laws which had to limit powers of NSA. Bamford, however, assures that in the agency and the government within the country did not refuse the idea of total control of information streams at all, and formulations in laws are too streamline that to these plans to prevent. Just the opposite, he writes, now NSA will be ready to direct all power of the espionage machine to the American population. According to him, now NSA has all necessary technologies to listen and tape telephone conversation everyone, to get access to any mailbox, to intercept data on financial transactions and to reach each closed database. For this purpose the agency cooperates with the main mobile operators and the leading Internet service providers. Moreover, a few years ago NSA allegedly made "enormous break" in the field of cryptography, and now the most complex codes are subject to it, and the supercomputer will be engaged in decoding of unprecedented power. It was necessary only to open storages of the center in Blaffdale and to begin to accumulate terabytes of data.

Usually from NSA it is impossible to wait for any public comments. Joke that the abbreviation of the agency is decrypted as "never say anything" (never tell anything). But this time it started talking. The other day the head of NSA Keith Alexander was interrogated in the congress based on article in Wired. It was made for some reason in a playful manner. "Let's assume, Dick Cheney became an U.S. President and decided to arrest and subject to tortures of each American who in correspondence by e-mail scoffed at his hunting skills (in 2006 the vice president Cheney accidentally hit during hunting of the Texas lawyer. — Forbes). Whether NSA have a technical capability to detect all these people?" — the representative of the State of Georgia Hank Johnson asked. "No" — Alexander iron answered it. The head of intelligence agency also answered all other questions negatively, having pronounced the word "no" in total more than ten times. All facts given in article Wired were as a result disproved. In completion, both interlocutors constantly mispronounced a surname of Bamford.

In reality described by Bamford, it is valid, quite difficult to believe: too omnipotent NSA seems. However the journalist is confident in the sources among which as acting, and former employees of the agency. One of them, for example, describes the confusion when alive eavesdropped on an intimate conversation of the American with the wife who is abroad. Another, the scientist and the mathematician, in detail opens all schemes which are used by his former employer for interception of data. "NSA becomes the largest, the most confidential and potentially the most aggressive intelligence agency in the history" — Bamford writes. At the same time he does not deny that actions of the agency first of all are directed to fight against external threats, however, having had an opportunity to kolletsionirovat all information and on the citizens, NSA decided to use it.

The various scandals connected with shadowing of the American government the population continue several decades — since "Watergate" and the order of the president Richard Nixon to eavesdrop on conversations of activists of the anti-war movement. The state everything denies every time, and every time it is caught on lies. It is followed by legal procedures, dismissals of officials and new laws. However then everything returns to a starting point: the state denies everything, and journalists tell more and more frightening stories.

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