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Interview with a local from Bluffdale, Utah, the home of the giant NSA Data Warehouse

Do you know what’s going on inside of that Data Center?

As far as I understand it, it’s a data storage facility. The NSA main headquarters back east they send them all their information to here. That one is the central headquarters. And there are several that are throughout the country but this is their main data facility where they store all their information. They have it right there next to the military base, Camp Williams, and so they are kind of… I mean all those hills and everything are owned by Camp Williams and so they’re just kind of inside of Camp Williams protection.

Has life in Bluffdale changed, ever since the NSA is in town?

Since the NSA facility is kind of been up and running, there has been a lot more activity. Certain times of the night I always hear something, a chopper that goes over and it’s like at a weird hour of the night – but it’s every night for the past couple of months and so. You know, I don’t know what that’s about, but that’s irregular and it’s a newer development, so, I don’t know what they’re doing with that.

Why Utah?

No idea. No idea, except, you know, it’s protected right there. You have the military base right here, that’s really active, and it goes all through the hills that way about 15 miles. You have Hill Air Force Base, that’s really close. And there’s another Air Force Base in West-Jordan. And another Army Center, that’s just about 20 miles south. So it’s kind of in the middle of a cluster of military bases, so that might be part of the reason why they chose there, too.

What does the NSA need all that water for?

As far as I understand they use the water to cool their super-computers and everything. The water is used as a cooling system but it evaporates a lot of it. On a cold day, if you look up there, there’s just a lot of steam coming up. In one of the classes at my university, they kind of went over the outlay of it. I think there’s like 4 tanks on either side that are just full of water. They are big, big tanks that just have hundreds of gallons of water in them.

And all of this to fight terrorism, correct?

I really feel that the word terrorism is so lose. It’s really comparable to the situation that happened with McCarthyism and the word Communism. And how McCarthy would say “Oh, well, so and so is a Communist or is a member of the Communist party“ and it became a very lose word and they were, you know, grabbing people and there was a black mark on their record forever. I think it’s just another excuse word that the government can use and say: You are a terrorist and we can hold you indefinitely. And they can! There is a law that says that if someone is a terrorist or a suspected terrorist, that they can be held without a trial indefinitely. And that’s really huge, you know, they can say anyone who’s in the country who goes against what their agenda is, they could potentially call him a terrorist and put him in jail and hold him. And as far as everything outside of the country, you know, they can control all the information, they are controlling all of it. I think, the biggest reason is, whoever controls information has the power to decide how that information is distributed. It informs the people and they use it to keep people under informed and in their control.

And the President?

I think that the President, he is… I don’t think he is completely informed as to what’s going on. Because of the NSA facilities there is a lot of people who aren’t members of the government who have high, high clearance – top-secret-clearance. They are starting to crop up all over the United States in larger and larger amounts. A shadow government that’s kind of pushing things and controlling things. Maybe not one, that’s an organized government, but the interest of all those people and corporations align, there’s a lot of people that are connected to different part like the NSA, that are trying to drive things, that happen in the country and in the world through the power of the United States. And Obama maybe more than anything is more of a puppet with a lot of the things that he does. He has his own agenda but he has pressure from this other entity to do different things, that isn’t checked by, you know, the Congress or the judicial branch or anything else. It’s not checked and it’s pushing all of the other three branches of government in the way they want him to go. And that’s kind of the way that I feel about it.

Snowden – hero or traitor?

Snowden… I think he’s a hero. Just like Daniel Ellsberg. I think that he did the same thing and that he was doing it for the right reasons, and that him sharing that information was important to the public to understand. He really got burned for sharing it. He wasn’t protected the same way that Daniel Ellsberg was, how he should have been. He is a hero. A lot of people are along those lines but a lot of people are still deceived and under informed as well.

Does the media report about the Data Center?

I think the media doesn’t say anything about it because they have sway with the government. The government has power over them to take their funds and to take their license to publish things. I think between the two of them that they try to keep it quiet and focus on things that will distract and entertain people but not keep them informed. It goes back to my thoughts on that they want to control information because that controls the people.

Why don’t the people go on the streets to demonstrate?

I wonder what it would take for people to start caring. Because all the things that happen there are so many people who are just pacified. They don’t care enough about it and they just kind of let it go and they just will say: that’s not my problem! But if everyone says that’s not my problem then – who has the power? It’s crazy but that’s kind of the situation that we are in.