Privacy's Long Shadow
On Oct. 23, 2009, Glenn Gaffney, the senior U.S. official responsible for collecting intelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, joined Utah Gov. Gary Herbert at a news conference in Salt Lake City. Together, they announced the construction of a new intelligence data center at Camp Williams, a National Guard site south of the capital.
The center has an important mission--providing foreign intelligence about cyber threats, as well as support to military networks and the Homeland Security Department, which is in charge of securing civilian agencies' networks. The National Security Agency will be the executive agent for the new site, which Herbert called a "godsend" in troubled economic times. Construction is estimated to cost $1.5 billion, and the center could employ up to 5,000 people throughout the state. "This is a win-win. This is good for the federal government; this is really good for Utah," he said.
But some Utah citizens aren't convinced. They recall that not so long ago, NSA was secretly sucking up the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who were believed to be in contact with terrorist suspects abroad. Now the agency plans to use the same kinds of surveillance tools to patrol the Internet for hackers and foreign cyber warriors.
