The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”

Warrantless wiretaps intimidate several organizations and cast a chill over lawyers, journalists and human rights researchers - Are you, a US citizen, calling cousin Ivor in Budapest, or reaching out to your old pen pal Yasmeen in Sydney? The National Security Agency (NSA) can listen in on your personal cellphone or read what you might be emailing him or her from your personal computer without telling you. The Feds can listen in to you now, "whenever government deems it necessary for foreign intelligence reasons" Jaffer explained to me.

Once complete the Utah Data Center will be the information hub in a complex surveillance network that’s been under construction for over a decade including four geostationary satellites positioned around the globe to monitor a vast spectrum of communication frequencies and secret domestic listening posts installed in various cooperating telecom firms (like AT&T and Verizon) granting them warrantless access to just about everything.

The biggest worry is likely to be this: That this program sets out to accomplish the same aims as the National ID scheme. Difference is, rather than trying to get the states to do the heavy lifting, Washington is going to try and compel private companies to do it.
So a campaign has already started to convince Americans to trust the government on this. (insert canned laughter here)

US government offers first full disclosure of spying costs ever.