Fort Mead, a closed town, is located about 40 km northeast of Washington, Maryland. Ordinary mortals are strictly forbidden to enter there. Here, in the so-called Crypto City employees, is the most hidden US intelligence agency - the National Security Agency (NSA).
It is for reasons of special secrecy that the abbreviation NSA is sometimes jokingly deciphered as No Such Agency ("agency that does not exist"). It solves, in short, the problem of obtaining information by technical means, being responsible for all types of electronic intelligence, data protection and cryptography.
And for this, the town has everything you need. 50 office buildings are securely guarded by high voltage fences and special armored barriers. Touch sensors and rotating video cameras are everywhere, and every wall and even every window with mirrored reflectors has a copper mesh to reflect electromagnetic waves.
And inside the town itself there is everything you need. It has its own power plant, a television network, its own heavily armed police, libraries, cafes, bars, even social and cultural facilities, including schools and a kindergarten. And it is from here that the almighty organization tracks almost all electronic contacts on the Earth ball.
How does it work?
The National Security Agency oversees intelligence gathering efforts wherever possible and by any means. A former employee of this special service, Edward Snowden, who stood at the very bottom of the hierarchical ladder and made a number of sensational revelations back in 2013, told something curious.
Promotional video:
According to Snowden, even his competence as a system administrator was enough to, sitting at his desk, listen to anyone using the Internet. Regardless of whether it was a federal state judge or the President of the United States himself. Indeed, with the current level of development of mobile services, it is as easy as shelling pears for the NSA to track any user with a mobile phone! Because the phone keeps in touch with the nearest cell tower of its mobile operator - this is what allows you to make calls, send and receive SMS or access the Internet. This means that the location of any mobile device that appears in virtual space can be determined quite accurately.
That is why the NSA does not use the services of special agents when collecting data, all information comes from cellular operators or even from computer servers located in different countries of the world! And the amount of information is huge, it is twice the volume of the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress.
How is the audition conducted?
For these purposes, giant servers have been installed in Crypto City, which, using special algorithms, scan a huge number of calls. The Big Data system seems to have realized the old dream of all police officers: to find out about the impending crime even before it is committed! How? And there, the most powerful processor calculators allow you to combine countless cross-links from almost structureless data. For example, how through simple messages on Facebook, making purchases through an online store and other GPS data to go to YouTube in order to remove or, conversely, reinforce suspicions about a person suspected of terrorism.
Another program, launched in 2009, is called MYSTIC. It is able to record all 100% of calls on the territory of a particular state and store this data for a month.
For the first time, the NSA tested this program nationwide only in 2011. Her successes amazed even the imagination of venerable scouts! Still would! After all, just one sending is enough for even the sender's profile to appear immediately somewhere on a server in the USA! I mean, the author can be seen in person!
As early as October 2013, the NSA planned to expand the program to six countries. But, naturally, everything was kept in the strictest confidence. Thus, the American "Washington Post", which published an article about wiretapping of 5 billion calls from citizens, relying on the testimony of Edward Snowden, did not have information about who was being spoken of and who was or is being wiretapped.
For the first time, Snowden began publishing articles revealing the NSA back in the spring of 2013. He provided information about spying on politicians, including top officials of the state, and as a result, a diplomatic scandal broke out. Against this background, in 2014, US President Barack Obama ordered to limit the NSA's ability to collect information about citizens.
However, the officials from the agency got out of this delicate situation, saying that they did not do it maliciously, but in the course of identifying threats to the national security of the state itself!
Is Snowden a CIA by any chance?
Of course, the classified documents leaked by Snowden put the NSA in an extremely embarrassing position. Such that the head of the NSA himself, Alexander Keith, was getting ready to resign in the same 2013. However, the fact that a 30-year-old guy has traded a healthy wealth and a well-to-do life in Hawaii for the unenviable position of the No. 1 enemy of a powerful state raises some questions. It is appropriate, for example, to ask: why did he actually arrange all this? And what awaits him in case of arrest: life behind bars as a traitor or … a reward as a hero?
Do not be surprised. Because there are already voices in Snowden's defense, for some saw in his act … a brilliant job as a CIA agent! A version is being put forward that he had a special assignment - to infiltrate and undermine the power of the NSA, that is, to compromise the firm of competitors! What for? And then, that in the United States there is a relentless struggle between the 16 largest special services. CIA Chief Brennan and Director of National Intelligence Klepper are fighting for the chair of the boss of all these departments. And all because of the budget - a tidbit of about $ 80 billion!
Knowledgeable people claim that the NSA, for example, knew about the impending 9/11 terrorist attack, but did not touch a finger in order to timely inform colleagues from the CIA or the FBI.
The administration of this special service has approximately double the number of employees against the CIA and three times against the FBI. In addition, the other two have their budgets cut all the time, and the chief of the NSA, Alexander Keith, is constantly seeking to increase funding for his department.
In other words, isn't the high-profile NSA exposure part of a well-planned action or a chess move? Besides, Edward Snowden actually worked for the CIA before serving at the NSA!
Informant from the shadows
The war in the Persian Gulf, in Vietnam, the destruction of the terrorist Osama bin Laden - wherever the US military strikes, the NSA is invisibly behind them. By no means exhibiting, as opposed to the CIA or the FBI. Why would enemies know that there are thousands of people at Fort Mead busy gathering information about them? However, this is what an activist Volker Birk once said: "I can hardly imagine that such a department spends tens of billions of dollars, ostensibly to hunt only 500 extremists … If they are investing billions, then it is probably quite purposeful!" He believes that, most likely, the NSA has some kind of Foreign Relations Bureau, which transfers information to certain American firms to ensure their priority in the world of business, including the international one. In vain, perhaps, is the wiretapping of office phones being conducted?
Whatever one may say, but the connections of the authorities, most likely, extend to the affairs of private business. So, it is quite logical that in the United States there may be such a group of people for whom the power of the NSA is literally like a thorn in the eye, and an attack on this office is hypothetically expected. So why not Snowden?..
And the last thing. To be honest, the secret actions of the NSA are sometimes useful to some foreign partners of the United States suffering from the actions of terrorists. And therefore, and this is understandable, the allies do not particularly grumble even when it suddenly becomes known that the ubiquitous agency is listening to politicians or even leaders of their country.
Based on materials from German media prepared by Yuri Kukhlivsky