Now that Big Brother is taking the time and the $2 billion expense of building a massive data collection center in Utah (details later), they need something to put in it. So here we go:
And if you'll buy that...
I feel safer now, don't you?
"The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats.
[...]
The guidelines will lengthen to five years -- from 180 days -- the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and "data mining them" using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat.
[...]
"There is a genuine operational need to try to get us into a position where we can make the maximum use of the information the government already has to protect people," said Robert S. Litt, the general counsel in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the National Counterterrorism Center. "We have to manage to do that in a way that provides protection to people's civil liberties and privacy. And I really think this has been a good-faith and reasonably successful effort to do that."
And if you'll buy that...
"Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks
The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including 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."
But "this is more than just a data center," says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. 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. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle--financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications--will be heavily encrypted.
According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: "Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."
I feel safer now, don't you?
Heck, I deleted my Facebook account right around the time I was let go. Hell, now my run of bad luck is explained. I suppose I can move out on the street and make money as a WI-FI hotspot. Safety is a fine goal, but I don't know if we are any safer than we were 11 years ago.
On another note, the development of social web sites is precisely the reason that vast data banks are being prepared. It is a human propensity to reveal over time basic personality traits and ultimate purpose on those sites, and they bear scrutiny based upon security concerns in this uber-nuclear age.
This is an urgently escalating trend that is unstoppable in terms of either projection or estimation of ultimate need.
The wagons are closing the circle - - - - There is already a trend developing in which employers are turning down prospective employees who do not have membership in social web sites like twitter, facebook, linkedin, and my space. And if they do pass that requisite for employment in membership status, the employer will demand passwords for those memberships so they can 'more fully evaluate' the prospective employee.
Yes Desperado, they are watching you!
Well, I wasn't going to vote for him anyways, but this helps put to rest any lingering guilt about not supporting Obama. He's hopelessly part of the machine.