James Bamford, whose track record on all things associated with the National Security Council (NSA) is excellent, has a chilling article in Wired about the NSA’s newest facilities and capabilities. They are jaw-dropping. In effect, he is telling us that once the new Utah facility is operational, everything that an American citizen does that involves electronic communication will be captured by NSA—emails, purchases, cell phone calls, text messages. Everything. Bamford doesn’t say it, but I assume that NSA can also do what hackers can do: Get access to the entire contents of disk drives.

Contemplating this capability, we are beyond having to ask whether NSA will watch over the most private affairs of American citizens. That’s already happening, under guidelines that the government assures us limits surveillance to those citizens who pose a threat. The only question is how fast the definition of “threat” will expand from people who pose a clear and present danger of mounting a terrorist attack to people who pose whatever kind of threat is dear to the heart of the administration in power.

Read More at The American. By Charles Murray.

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