America's Book of Secrets (2012) s03e02 Episode Script
Big Brother
NARRATOR: Prying eyes watching every move.
JESSELYN RADACK: People are being monitored way more than they realize.
NARRATOR: Eager ears eavesdropping on conversations.
SAMY KAMKAR: Those devices listen to what's happening in your living room.
NARRATOR: And hungry hands rifling files in an unrestricted search for private data.
MANCOW MULLER: This is like a Logan's Run kind of future.
This is frightening stuff.
NARRATOR: Americans are under surveillance like never before.
But just who is monitoring us? MARK DICE: Facebook actually works hand in hand with the government.
NARRATOR: And what are their secret reasons for tracking millions of citizens every day? ALEX JONES: Imagine what an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin would have done with these NSA-type powers.
THOMAS DRAKE: Those are some of the most secret of the secrets that exist in the United States today.
NARRATOR: There are those who believe in the existence of a book.
A book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of the United States of America.
A book whose very existence is known to only a select few.
But if such a book exists, what would it contain? Secret agendas? Secret tactics? Secret alliances? Does there really exist America's Book of Secrets? June 5, 2013.
America awakens to a shocking headline- one that shakes the country to its core.
A British newspaper, The Guardian, reveals that the National Security Agency, or NSA, has been secretly collecting cell phone data from millions of people without their knowledge.
Americans can now confirm, without a doubt, that the government has been monitoring its citizens.
Even if they have no ties to terrorism.
And they've been doing so for years.
The unbelievable disclosures come from a former NSA contractor named Edward Snowden.
GLENN GREENWALD: We had to go to Hong Kong in order to meet him.
We didn't know if we had been followed or were being surveilled.
He would be holding a Rubik's cube, which is how we would be able to identify him, because we didn't know what he looked like.
And what he told me is that very few of the surveillance programs actually have anything to do with 9/11 or terrorism or national security.
MARK ZAID: Edward Snowden was entrusted to keep some of the most secretive notions and activities of our government.
And he betrayed that.
Is he this hero or is he a traitor? Now, I look at him as, frankly, right now, just a criminal.
NARRATOR: Although some view Snowden as a traitor, even they cannot deny the facts that his leaks exposed.
For the first time in our nation's history, the technology exists to monitor and track every American.
RONALD KESSLER: We are much more monitored and "under surveillance"- if you want to use that term- than in the past, whether it's NSA looking at e-mails or telephone records or whether it's simply surveillance cameras wherever we go.
JOSH MARPET: We're watched from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed.
When you wake up, what's the first thing you do? You go to the bathroom.
You jump in the shower.
You turn the water on and brush your teeth.
There are water meter rings that go around your water pipe to check whether water's flowing through it.
There's the power meter rings, where the meter readings are being beamed, in real time, back to the power company.
So, the power company can tell you, after a while, which appliance corresponds to which power spike.
So, I can monitor everything you do in your house without ever having a camera inside.
MULLER: We have four miles of farmland, my family does, in the middle of Missouri.
The heartland.
The Bible Belt.
The buckle of the Bible Belt.
And there's a drone.
I talked about it.
We got attacked.
"Oh, it's crazy talk.
" And then the stuff is revealed to be true.
Now they admit, yeah, they're watching us with drones.
And they never apologize.
JONES: Google has come out and bragged that they can predict- over 93% of the time- a month out where you're gonna go eat dinner on a certain date.
It knows the little patterns in your own minds.
Imagine what an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin would have done with these NSA-type powers against the people of Europe.
NARRATOR: Many Americans now wonder: could the unprecedented level of surveillance in our society be termed Big Brother? ZAID: Big Brother, of course, is a fictional character from George Orwell's book, 1984.
It's come to symbolize this obsessive, intrusive, oppressive government that would be not only in the shadows but also in our faces of monitoring everything that any citizen does.
RADACK: Big Brother is a metaphor, right now, for our surveillance state and the fact that the government has insight into everything.
Your health records, your tax records, your texts, your e-mails, your phone calls, everything.
All electronic digital data that belongs to you is within the purview of the government to take at any time, and they are.
DRAKE: Some of us have called it "turnkey tyranny.
" All the enabling mechanisms, the technology is in place.
NARRATOR: The Snowden leaks reveal a level of covert data tracking previously unthought-of in our country's history.
Not only on our phones but also online.
Even more shocking: they expose how the NSA stores this collected data for an undisclosed amount of time, in case it's needed for future investigations.
Some intelligence experts now wonder if the NSA has crossed the line and gone too far.
DRAKE: It is important to understand the NSA was formed for a very specific purpose and that was in 1952 under the Truman administration.
It was designed to be a technical collection agency of foreign intelligence.
The things that mattered.
The things that were considered threats.
That structure was still there as of 9/11.
NARRATOR: The largest attack on American soil, 9/11, left more than 2,900 dead and would forever change how and when the government collects data on its own citizens.
Defense agencies felt more pressure than ever to find and track terrorist communications both here and abroad.
And they were willing to cast a wide net in order to foil future terrorist plots.
KESSLER: After 9/11, the intelligence community became involved in, uh, sifting- much more extensively- the means of communication, looking for leads to terrorists, looking to roll up plots before they happen rather than after they happen.
CLINT VAN ZANDT: The measure of a successful terrorist is whether he's actually able to kill, whether to carry out the mission or not.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies, ever since 9/11, have intercepted a number of individuals.
NARRATOR: While the NSA claims their surveillance has stopped acts of terrorism before they could begin, the Snowden revelations lead some to question: is the current level of NSA surveillance really about curbing terrorism? Does the NSA really need to track the data and location of every American in order to stop a future terrorist attack? MARPET: If you can collect enough information, you can determine the patterns of people that are terrorists.
But a mass information-gathering conglomeration- without regard to whether they're terrorists- that's one that may not be as legitimate.
NARRATOR: Although both Republican and Democrat administrations have approved the NSA's secret data collection, there are now many who believe that the NSA is becoming something it was never meant to be: a domestic spy agency one that operates in secret.
(camera shutter clicks) DRAKE: After 9/11, the government was doing all kinds of things in the deepest of secrecy, without any knowledge by the public.
Five days after 9/11, Vice President Cheney said publicly- network television- we're gonna go to "the dark side.
" NARRATOR: Could that dark side include violating the Fourth Amendment? A law that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of American citizens? DRAKE: Three and a half weeks after 9/11, I had the conversation with the number three person at NSA, not knowing at that time that President Bush had signed the secret presidential directive authorizing NSA to turn the United States into the equivalent of a foreign nation.
And he simply said "You don't understand, Mr.
Drake.
The White House has approved the program.
It's all legal.
" And as soon as I heard that the hair is going up on the back of my neck.
NARRATOR: Could the NSA data collection program be just one piece of an all-seeing Big Brother? What if Big Brother needed to track not just your private correspondence but also your private location at all times? In fact, what if he was taking pictures of you right in your own home even as we speak? NARRATOR: Boston, Massachusetts.
April 15, 2013.
(explosion) Two pressure-cooker bombs explode near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
(people shouting, screaming) The explosions kill three spectators and injure 264.
The alleged perpetrators: Chechen brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who are motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs.
RICHARD DESLAURIERS: After a very detailed analysis of photo, video, and other evidence, we are releasing photos of these two suspects.
NARRATOR: Fortunately the event is captured on a multitude of public and private cameras, which enable law enforcement to identify the brothers, leading to the death of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar after a four-day manhunt.
While many agree that an extensive network of public and private cameras can help catch criminal behavior, some experts worry- do events like the Boston bombing justify the ability of authorities to watch over our every move? RADACK: Americans are monitored a lot more, but the problem is, they aren't informed that they're being monitored.
I mean, at least in Britain they have stickers everywhere saying: You are under surveillance.
But here people are being monitored way more than I think they realize.
NARRATOR: New York, New York.
On the southern tip of Manhattan is the city's financial district, one of the most powerful economic centers on the planet.
(bell rings) But could it also be one of the most secretly watched? MARPET: Just about every dollar in the world comes through here at one point or another.
They want to make sure it's protected.
So they built what they call the Ring of Steel.
The financial district is encircled by a huge amount of cameras, surveillance devices.
They incorporate private cameras, public cameras, police cameras to make sure that every avenue into and out of the financial district of New York City is covered completely.
NARRATOR: Could this Ring of Steel, hidden discreetly above the heads of thousands of bankers, tourists and residents, be quietly monitoring the streets below? MARPET: We've got so many cameras around, it's not even funny.
Right up here, for example, there's a pan-tilt-zoom camera.
With that one camera, they can look all around this block and see anything with a 30x zoom.
NARRATOR: But while closed-circuit cameras can work to solve crimes after the fact- like locating the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings- could they also be used by law enforcement to identify perpetrators before a crime even happens? The answer is: yes, they can- thanks to a top secret camera system called TrapWire.
DICE: TrapWire is a secret facial recognition system that's been in operation since 2007, where major cities in America have facial recognition scanning cameras already operational, and have for years.
MARPET: Let's imagine that you've got a building.
Somebody wants to commit a terrorist act against the building.
They're going to have to surveil the building.
They're going to have to basically case the joint.
Well, if I can spot the people doing reconnaissance, I can stop the attack before it happens.
Video analytics is incredibly useful, and in the last few years it's become incredibly powerful.
NARRATOR: How does a powerful video-analytic system like TrapWire even go about creating a database? Some say a common social network is responsible for one of the most shocking Big Brother secrets of all.
DICE: Facebook, actually, is one of the biggest facial recognition databases in the country, who works hand in hand with the government through their secret affiliations.
So, since about at least 2007, major cities in America, government buildings, airports, et cetera, have had fully functioning facial recognition scanning systems in there.
MARPET: It's used all over the country and all over the world for various reasons.
Facial recognition software was used to find Osama bin Laden from a satellite.
How much more science fiction can you get? That's awesome! MULLER: Everything we do is watched.
Everything.
It reminds me of an old Twilight Zone episode, where we're like hamsters.
America's become a Habitrail, and we are we're pets.
It's like we're pets of the government, for our own good.
Everything they do, they say, is for our own good.
NARRATOR: While some admit it may be impossible to escape the eye of Big Brother on city streets, most Americans take comfort that they can escape his gaze in the safety of their own homes.
Or can they? KAMKAR: The Xbox has a really cool technology called Kinect.
It's multiple cameras on this one device that you use with your Xbox, and what it gets is a 3D picture of anyone in front of it.
There's always the potential for these devices to get hacked or accessed somehow, you know, for nefarious purposes.
NARRATOR: Should Americans be concerned that their seemingly innocuous home gaming devices are really portals that hackers, or perhaps even the government- can use to look inside their homes? KAMKAR: There's no known cases of the Xbox Kinect being hacked.
However, the fact is, there is a camera that's in your living room, so if a hacker can find out the right way, it's possible to enable those devices and potentially monitor and listen to what's happening in your living room.
NARRATOR: Even though the Kinect camera hasn't been hacked into yet, could there be good reason to be wary of a breach at some point? There are those who claim the FBI has already used technology to secretly keep an eye on Americans in their own homes, with their own cameras, and without their consent.
KAMKAR: They can actually start rerecording from your Web cam on your computer without the light ever turning on.
This is something the FBI has had the ability to do for many years now.
They're not gonna employ that commonly because they don't necessarily want everyone to know.
NARRATOR: If Big Brother can spy on you from the street corner and peer into your home, is there really any escape? Some may try to run to the great outdoors.
But even there, could there be prying eyes watching from the sky? ZAID: You have no idea the NARRATOR: Midland City, Alabama, February 4, 2013.
FBI agents surround an underground bunker where 65-year-old kidnapper Jimmy Lee Dykes has a five-year-old boy held hostage.
During the tense standoff, the FBI secretly employs a high-tech spy machine to see just how Dykes is behaving during the hostage negotiations.
KESSLER: The FBI was able to use a drone to pinpoint, with infrared, exactly where the bad guy was in relation to the little child.
NARRATOR: When Dykes started to behave erratically with his gun, the FBI moved in on the bunker to rescue the boy.
KESSLER: The FBI was able to go in with the HRT team and wipe out the bad guy without harming the kid.
NARRATOR: Law enforcement officials applauded the use of the spy drone to help save the boy.
But could there have been the potential for its abuse? The Edward Snowden leaks revealed that America has not only been using spy drones for law enforcement- they've also been using them to spy on American citizens.
MARPET: Not only visually, with long-range cameras, but also over their Wi-Fi, also over electronics, picking up cell frequencies from your cell phones- all kinds of different things to get access to all the information about you: where you are, who you're talking to, what you're doing.
Snowden's leak showed that it was happening at a hugely larger level than we ever imagined.
NARRATOR: The spy drone leak was confirmed on June 18, 2013, by outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Mueller claims that the use of domestic spy drones was "very minimal" and "very seldom.
" But critics of domestic drones wonder if their potential for abuse outweighs any benefits for law enforcement.
MARPET: There are sheriff's departments buying drones.
Why would a sheriff's department need a drone? Well, they said, "Well, we want to find out where people are growing marijuana in the town limits, we want to make sure that traffic is flowing correctly.
" And that's why we need drones for the sheriff's department? Uh, sorry.
Maybe I'm a little out of touch, but that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
ZAID: What are the drones doing? You can't hear the drones, anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 and feet higher.
You have no idea the drones are there, but yet they can see into your house.
They can decide or determine if you are in your home and perhaps who you are that's in your home.
NARRATOR: Just how many Americans were targeted by the FBI's drone surveillance program? We may never know.
But critics argue that the Department of Defense's DARPA- or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency- is currently conducting more and more research into drones that are smaller, faster, and don't resemble what we think of as drones at all.
ANTHES: DARPA has been very interested in drones- that's no secret- and particularly tiny flying drones, really inconspicuous things that can maybe fly into buildings and conduct surveillance.
And so one scientist at DARPA realized that maybe they could use insects as a shortcut to their tiny flying drones because insects are already engineered for flying and they're capable of doing it for hours at a time.
NARRATOR: By implanting small electric components into the brains of insects like beetles, moths, and cockroaches, DARPA scientists have found that they can actually control the flight patterns of these insects by remote control.
ANTHES: The insects aren't any good if they just fly around doing whatever insect things they want to do.
They're only useful if they can be controlled as well as a machine, to turn in particular directions at particular speeds, flying at certain altitudes.
NARRATOR: But how could these cyborg insects really be used as drones? ANTHES: They'd want to load this insect up with various surveillance equipment.
The bigger the insect is, the more of a payload it can carry, things like video cameras or microphones, to conduct all sorts of surveillance tasks.
NARRATOR: Is this the future of aerial surveillance, the use of insects both real and even cybernetic? If so, where will the government's spy capabilities lead them next? There are those who believe it will be in the most shocking area of all, right within our very own bodies.
MULLER: Y NARRATOR: September 20, 2013.
Apple releases the iPhone 5s to great fanfare.
The device includes new technology that allows users to unlock their phone with a unique biological identifier, a fingerprint.
Consumers applaud the move as one way to make the pricy phones less likely to be stolen and hacked.
But just how secure is this revolutionary innovation? MARPET: There was actually I think it was a $40,000 bounty for the first person to hack the iPhone fingerprint.
It's been done.
There is a way now to take your fingerprint off of a Coke can or a wine glass, scan it and print it and then put it on the iPhone.
And guess what- it'll unlock your iPhone.
So your iPhone is already hacked in that fashion.
NARRATOR: Apple insists the fingerprint images won't be stored in any database.
In other words, even if someone were able to hack into Apple's records, they still wouldn't be able to access your fingerprint.
Even so, there are those who question whether Apple's new technology is just another way for the government to track its citizens.
JONES: The truth is, the NSA and hundreds of other private corporations and agencies are in a gold rush to steal and track every bit of data they can.
The level of technology they have makes 1984 look like a wonderful place to visit compared to this.
NARRATOR: There are some who argue that cell phones can already be used as a tracking device.
It has the capability of knowing a person's location at all times, even with the GPS locator turned off.
One such person is former computer hacker Samy Kamkar.
KAMKAR: In late 2010 I was researching geolocation with HTML5, and what it did was, you could go to a Web site, and it could tell you exactly where you were located to the physical address.
And I thought this was really interesting, and I looked into how this worked.
NARRATOR: When Kamkar investigated Google's database, he made an astonishing discovery.
The company was secretly storing subscribers' router addresses.
KAMKAR: I investigated that more, and I found that Google Street View cars are driving around, and while they're taking pictures for their maps program, they're also tracking where all these routers are and correlating it with the current GPS.
Google now knows that whenever they see this wireless network communicating with it, they would also know where that person was physically located.
(computer chirps) NARRATOR: Kamkar also discovered that cell phone companies seemed to be playing the same game.
He found that every phone carrier had created location databases.
And without their users' knowledge.
When the information was revealed, users were incensed.
But even after the wireless phone companies agreed to change their policies, the result was that many of the applications simply would not work when tracking features were turned off.
KAMKAR: You pretty much have to play their game if you want to use their services.
NARRATOR: Could this be Big Brother's ultimate master plan- forcing Americans to be digitally wired to corporate service providers in order to complete the most basic of day-to-day activities? CULLEN HOBACK: To be a member of modern society, you have to use Google, you have to use Facebook, you have to use LinkedIn.
These are services that people need for their jobs.
So, to say that we have a choice, that's an illusion.
NARRATOR: Even if some Americans were willing to try and forgo cell phone and e-mail use in their daily routines, could other monitoring technologies soon take their place? May 2010.
Critics allege President Barack Obama's health care bill will have a provision that requires all participants to be microchipped.
While the health care bill that ultimately passes contains no such mandate, there are many who believe that all Americans will eventually be microchipped.
MULLER: Rule number one in Obamacare is, everything has to be digitized.
Everything has to be digital.
You're gonna have the microchip.
As you walk past anyone, they can pull off that information, all of your personal medical history.
NARRATOR: Some suspect the government might even have an endgame to avoid implanting RFID chips into an unwilling American public.
In July 2012, the FDA approves the use of digestible microchips embedded in prescription drugs.
The stated reason for approval- the chips will help alert patients when to take their medication by sending a reminder to their cell phones.
But some worry- could these high-tech pills be used, instead, to spy on American citizens? JONES: A microchipped population and an RFID radio frequency tracking system is a real threat and is something being pushed by the establishment.
It was eight years ago that Mexico moved to make the senior law enforcement take implantable chips.
And the military is promoting the soldiers taking chips.
NARRATOR: Just how far will the government go to track an entire population? And to do so, would they need help from other secret sources? NARRATOR: Washington, D.
C.
, June 12, 2013.
NSA chief General Keith Alexander is questioned by the Senate Appropriations Committee about the agency's secret surveillance program.
JEFF MERKLEY: Here I have my cell phone.
What authorized investigation gave you the grounds for acquiring my cell phone data? NARRATOR: One of the most shocking allegations of the Edward Snowden leaks so far is the revelation of how the NSA secretly uses private, high-tech corporations to gather and collect data on American citizens through a super-secret program called PRISM.
A program that both the government and big business had been trying hard to keep hidden.
ZAID: PRISM is one of the programs we've come to learn as an NSA, essentially, data-mining function.
It is six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
It is amassing all of this information, particularly from, say, the nine big companies in the United States, and grabbing all their data and putting it into a prism.
A prism that then could be data-mined.
DRAKE: The Internet has become the single largest surveillance platform in history.
These are secret agreements with companies, and those are some of the most secret secrets that exist in the United States today.
It's just how closely aligned government and corporations are.
Snowden actually managed to find one of the secret court orders compelling Verizon to turn over every single phone record each and every day to NSA.
No probable cause.
A hundred million plus subscribers, and that's just Verizon.
NARRATOR: Some worry that our digital suppliers, in order to comply with PRISM, are holding records of our online and cell usage for a longer and longer period of time.
Possibly even forever.
HOBACK: I think one of the greatest secrets about Facebook is that we don't have access to all of the data that they're storing on us.
What you're not getting is how long you hovered over your ex's Facebook page.
What you're not getting is all of the deleted information that they're still storing about you.
It's all there, even though you've said that you deleted it.
They keep it in perpetuity.
NARRATOR: Americans may wonder, what do these huge corporations get in return for cooperating with the government? Could there be a secret reason why they'd want to comply? DRAKE: None of these companies have challenged the government, because they're in league with the government.
And if you look at the SEC filings, the 10X filings, you will see how much money Verizon actually receives from the government every year for providing this kind of information.
They're not doing this for free, believe me.
NARRATOR: So far there's been no known change to the NSA's data collection policies.
And if the government continues to collect our online data for companies that we trust, is there anything we can do to protect our online privacy? HOBACK: Our digital privacy has been eroded one click at a time.
I would say that privacy agreements are there to take away our privacy, not to actually guarantee it.
What companies are after is getting as much data and information from us as possible.
That's something that the government has also wanted for a very long time, a sort of unadulterated access to everything about us.
The problem with terms and conditions agreements is that they're designed not to be read.
Many of these things are 40 pages long.
So, do we have any choice in terms of negotiating these deals? No, we don't.
These companies are going to continue to take away our rights, and the government is going to benefit directly from that.
NARRATOR: So far big business and the federal government have claimed no wrongdoing.
But if their actions really are legitimate, why are both working so hard to keep them so secret? HOBACK: There's this unholy alliance that's formed between corporations and the government.
It's really allowed both of them to get something that they've wanted forever.
NARRATOR: But if our every communication, action, and thought is monitored by both government and big business, what exactly is their ultimate plan? NARRATOR: In the 2002 feature film Minority Report, a special high-tech police unit locates and arrests criminals before they commit their crimes.
Future murders are stopped solely by analyzing a suspect's intent to kill.
But is peering into the realm of a person's inner thoughts and motivations even possible, especially when they appear ordinary on the outside? Some believe the future of Big Brother involves just that- deciphering a person's intentions before he or she has a chance to act on them- and according to some experts, the future may already be here with a secret program created by the Department of Homeland Security, called FAST.
DICE: FAST stands for Future Attribution Screening Technology.
FAST is another creepy Orwellian government program that is almost like a lie detector on steroids.
It's a lie detector system that detects people's mal intent, where they can detect supposedly whether you have bad intentions.
NARRATOR: The system uses cameras and sensors to measure skin temperature, breathing, pulse rate, pupil dilation, and other physiological and behavioral patterns.
The ultimate goal? To recognize and stop a terrorist before they strike.
The technology will most likely be used at airports, national borders and special events.
But critics of the system argue there could be a massive potential for innocent people being targeted.
DICE: This is essentially an Orwellian mind-reading system.
The dangers with these systems is that they create a lot of false positives.
So if you're traveling, and you're nervous or you're sweating, you may create a false positive, and so you may be looked at as a terrorist.
NARRATOR: With the federal government sponsoring high-tech systems that attempt to read the minds of its own citizens, some Americans are wondering out loud, is the age of Big Brother upon us? And, if so, were Edward Snowden's leaks of NSA secrets justified? DRAKE: What he's revealing is the zero sum game.
In order to know anything about anybody or anything, we need to have it all.
We need to take it all, we need to collect it all.
It's like taking all of the sand on all the beaches of the world and dumping them into landfills, and then building a really expensive sieve to figure out what you have.
MULLER: Big Brother is controlling all the information- everything you do on the computer, everything you do on the phone- for your own good.
Whenever you hear "for your own good" from the government, or "for the children," you're about to lose some money or freedom, always.
NARRATOR: Can America ever return to a time when our calls, texts, and online correspondence are no longer subject to government search and analysis? Some believe that a new NSA data center in the remote Utah desert, spanning the area of 19 football fields, already gives us the answer.
HOBACK: Bluffdale, Utah, the NSA data center.
It can store- there are estimates between two billion and 14 billion gigabytes of information.
But what Bluffdale is really about is storing everything- all phone calls, all e-mails, all Internet transactions- so that it can be looked at at a future date.
NARRATOR: The sheer size and scope of the Bluffdale facility have many security experts wondering: is the purpose of the cavernous building really about uncovering terrorist communications? Or could it have a more ominous objective? HOBACK: So imagine for a second if you're a protester and you get caught and they bring you in.
Well, they can look at everything you might have said up until that point: relationips that you've had, friends that you've known.
And then they could potentially find all of your protester friends.
So the capabilities of storing our entire digital trail may very well lilie in this NSA Bluffdale data center.
MARPET: Could the government keep tabs on them? And keep track of them? And see how they vote? I think that's specifically against some amendments to our Constitution, but we'll see what actually happens.
NARRATOR: With massive NSA storage facilities, drones that fly overhead, and digestible microchips that track our location, some Americans wonder: in today's digital age, is the concept of privacy now extinct? RADACK: We are in danger of becoming a surveillance state, the government trying to convince people that this is being done in their name.
JONES: Knowledge is power.
And it's being used to create a technocratic dictatorship of informational control.
And that's really the heart of what the NSA and others are doing.
It's about intel, it's about data.
And it's not for American interest.
MULLER: This is frightening stuff, how we are turned into branded beasts that they move along.
Do you know what you and I are called to the IRS? "Inventory.
" You brand the cattle.
You microchip the inventory.
Keep an eye on 'em.
NARRATOR: If the government simply sees Americans as a commodity, who is to blame? A hierarchy of corporate and government interests so intertwined that they must monitor every American citizen? Or should we point the finger at ourselves and our own complacency? One thing is certain the age of Big Brother has not only arrived, it has only just begun.
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS Captioned by Media access.
wgbh.
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JESSELYN RADACK: People are being monitored way more than they realize.
NARRATOR: Eager ears eavesdropping on conversations.
SAMY KAMKAR: Those devices listen to what's happening in your living room.
NARRATOR: And hungry hands rifling files in an unrestricted search for private data.
MANCOW MULLER: This is like a Logan's Run kind of future.
This is frightening stuff.
NARRATOR: Americans are under surveillance like never before.
But just who is monitoring us? MARK DICE: Facebook actually works hand in hand with the government.
NARRATOR: And what are their secret reasons for tracking millions of citizens every day? ALEX JONES: Imagine what an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin would have done with these NSA-type powers.
THOMAS DRAKE: Those are some of the most secret of the secrets that exist in the United States today.
NARRATOR: There are those who believe in the existence of a book.
A book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of the United States of America.
A book whose very existence is known to only a select few.
But if such a book exists, what would it contain? Secret agendas? Secret tactics? Secret alliances? Does there really exist America's Book of Secrets? June 5, 2013.
America awakens to a shocking headline- one that shakes the country to its core.
A British newspaper, The Guardian, reveals that the National Security Agency, or NSA, has been secretly collecting cell phone data from millions of people without their knowledge.
Americans can now confirm, without a doubt, that the government has been monitoring its citizens.
Even if they have no ties to terrorism.
And they've been doing so for years.
The unbelievable disclosures come from a former NSA contractor named Edward Snowden.
GLENN GREENWALD: We had to go to Hong Kong in order to meet him.
We didn't know if we had been followed or were being surveilled.
He would be holding a Rubik's cube, which is how we would be able to identify him, because we didn't know what he looked like.
And what he told me is that very few of the surveillance programs actually have anything to do with 9/11 or terrorism or national security.
MARK ZAID: Edward Snowden was entrusted to keep some of the most secretive notions and activities of our government.
And he betrayed that.
Is he this hero or is he a traitor? Now, I look at him as, frankly, right now, just a criminal.
NARRATOR: Although some view Snowden as a traitor, even they cannot deny the facts that his leaks exposed.
For the first time in our nation's history, the technology exists to monitor and track every American.
RONALD KESSLER: We are much more monitored and "under surveillance"- if you want to use that term- than in the past, whether it's NSA looking at e-mails or telephone records or whether it's simply surveillance cameras wherever we go.
JOSH MARPET: We're watched from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed.
When you wake up, what's the first thing you do? You go to the bathroom.
You jump in the shower.
You turn the water on and brush your teeth.
There are water meter rings that go around your water pipe to check whether water's flowing through it.
There's the power meter rings, where the meter readings are being beamed, in real time, back to the power company.
So, the power company can tell you, after a while, which appliance corresponds to which power spike.
So, I can monitor everything you do in your house without ever having a camera inside.
MULLER: We have four miles of farmland, my family does, in the middle of Missouri.
The heartland.
The Bible Belt.
The buckle of the Bible Belt.
And there's a drone.
I talked about it.
We got attacked.
"Oh, it's crazy talk.
" And then the stuff is revealed to be true.
Now they admit, yeah, they're watching us with drones.
And they never apologize.
JONES: Google has come out and bragged that they can predict- over 93% of the time- a month out where you're gonna go eat dinner on a certain date.
It knows the little patterns in your own minds.
Imagine what an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin would have done with these NSA-type powers against the people of Europe.
NARRATOR: Many Americans now wonder: could the unprecedented level of surveillance in our society be termed Big Brother? ZAID: Big Brother, of course, is a fictional character from George Orwell's book, 1984.
It's come to symbolize this obsessive, intrusive, oppressive government that would be not only in the shadows but also in our faces of monitoring everything that any citizen does.
RADACK: Big Brother is a metaphor, right now, for our surveillance state and the fact that the government has insight into everything.
Your health records, your tax records, your texts, your e-mails, your phone calls, everything.
All electronic digital data that belongs to you is within the purview of the government to take at any time, and they are.
DRAKE: Some of us have called it "turnkey tyranny.
" All the enabling mechanisms, the technology is in place.
NARRATOR: The Snowden leaks reveal a level of covert data tracking previously unthought-of in our country's history.
Not only on our phones but also online.
Even more shocking: they expose how the NSA stores this collected data for an undisclosed amount of time, in case it's needed for future investigations.
Some intelligence experts now wonder if the NSA has crossed the line and gone too far.
DRAKE: It is important to understand the NSA was formed for a very specific purpose and that was in 1952 under the Truman administration.
It was designed to be a technical collection agency of foreign intelligence.
The things that mattered.
The things that were considered threats.
That structure was still there as of 9/11.
NARRATOR: The largest attack on American soil, 9/11, left more than 2,900 dead and would forever change how and when the government collects data on its own citizens.
Defense agencies felt more pressure than ever to find and track terrorist communications both here and abroad.
And they were willing to cast a wide net in order to foil future terrorist plots.
KESSLER: After 9/11, the intelligence community became involved in, uh, sifting- much more extensively- the means of communication, looking for leads to terrorists, looking to roll up plots before they happen rather than after they happen.
CLINT VAN ZANDT: The measure of a successful terrorist is whether he's actually able to kill, whether to carry out the mission or not.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies, ever since 9/11, have intercepted a number of individuals.
NARRATOR: While the NSA claims their surveillance has stopped acts of terrorism before they could begin, the Snowden revelations lead some to question: is the current level of NSA surveillance really about curbing terrorism? Does the NSA really need to track the data and location of every American in order to stop a future terrorist attack? MARPET: If you can collect enough information, you can determine the patterns of people that are terrorists.
But a mass information-gathering conglomeration- without regard to whether they're terrorists- that's one that may not be as legitimate.
NARRATOR: Although both Republican and Democrat administrations have approved the NSA's secret data collection, there are now many who believe that the NSA is becoming something it was never meant to be: a domestic spy agency one that operates in secret.
(camera shutter clicks) DRAKE: After 9/11, the government was doing all kinds of things in the deepest of secrecy, without any knowledge by the public.
Five days after 9/11, Vice President Cheney said publicly- network television- we're gonna go to "the dark side.
" NARRATOR: Could that dark side include violating the Fourth Amendment? A law that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of American citizens? DRAKE: Three and a half weeks after 9/11, I had the conversation with the number three person at NSA, not knowing at that time that President Bush had signed the secret presidential directive authorizing NSA to turn the United States into the equivalent of a foreign nation.
And he simply said "You don't understand, Mr.
Drake.
The White House has approved the program.
It's all legal.
" And as soon as I heard that the hair is going up on the back of my neck.
NARRATOR: Could the NSA data collection program be just one piece of an all-seeing Big Brother? What if Big Brother needed to track not just your private correspondence but also your private location at all times? In fact, what if he was taking pictures of you right in your own home even as we speak? NARRATOR: Boston, Massachusetts.
April 15, 2013.
(explosion) Two pressure-cooker bombs explode near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
(people shouting, screaming) The explosions kill three spectators and injure 264.
The alleged perpetrators: Chechen brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who are motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs.
RICHARD DESLAURIERS: After a very detailed analysis of photo, video, and other evidence, we are releasing photos of these two suspects.
NARRATOR: Fortunately the event is captured on a multitude of public and private cameras, which enable law enforcement to identify the brothers, leading to the death of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar after a four-day manhunt.
While many agree that an extensive network of public and private cameras can help catch criminal behavior, some experts worry- do events like the Boston bombing justify the ability of authorities to watch over our every move? RADACK: Americans are monitored a lot more, but the problem is, they aren't informed that they're being monitored.
I mean, at least in Britain they have stickers everywhere saying: You are under surveillance.
But here people are being monitored way more than I think they realize.
NARRATOR: New York, New York.
On the southern tip of Manhattan is the city's financial district, one of the most powerful economic centers on the planet.
(bell rings) But could it also be one of the most secretly watched? MARPET: Just about every dollar in the world comes through here at one point or another.
They want to make sure it's protected.
So they built what they call the Ring of Steel.
The financial district is encircled by a huge amount of cameras, surveillance devices.
They incorporate private cameras, public cameras, police cameras to make sure that every avenue into and out of the financial district of New York City is covered completely.
NARRATOR: Could this Ring of Steel, hidden discreetly above the heads of thousands of bankers, tourists and residents, be quietly monitoring the streets below? MARPET: We've got so many cameras around, it's not even funny.
Right up here, for example, there's a pan-tilt-zoom camera.
With that one camera, they can look all around this block and see anything with a 30x zoom.
NARRATOR: But while closed-circuit cameras can work to solve crimes after the fact- like locating the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings- could they also be used by law enforcement to identify perpetrators before a crime even happens? The answer is: yes, they can- thanks to a top secret camera system called TrapWire.
DICE: TrapWire is a secret facial recognition system that's been in operation since 2007, where major cities in America have facial recognition scanning cameras already operational, and have for years.
MARPET: Let's imagine that you've got a building.
Somebody wants to commit a terrorist act against the building.
They're going to have to surveil the building.
They're going to have to basically case the joint.
Well, if I can spot the people doing reconnaissance, I can stop the attack before it happens.
Video analytics is incredibly useful, and in the last few years it's become incredibly powerful.
NARRATOR: How does a powerful video-analytic system like TrapWire even go about creating a database? Some say a common social network is responsible for one of the most shocking Big Brother secrets of all.
DICE: Facebook, actually, is one of the biggest facial recognition databases in the country, who works hand in hand with the government through their secret affiliations.
So, since about at least 2007, major cities in America, government buildings, airports, et cetera, have had fully functioning facial recognition scanning systems in there.
MARPET: It's used all over the country and all over the world for various reasons.
Facial recognition software was used to find Osama bin Laden from a satellite.
How much more science fiction can you get? That's awesome! MULLER: Everything we do is watched.
Everything.
It reminds me of an old Twilight Zone episode, where we're like hamsters.
America's become a Habitrail, and we are we're pets.
It's like we're pets of the government, for our own good.
Everything they do, they say, is for our own good.
NARRATOR: While some admit it may be impossible to escape the eye of Big Brother on city streets, most Americans take comfort that they can escape his gaze in the safety of their own homes.
Or can they? KAMKAR: The Xbox has a really cool technology called Kinect.
It's multiple cameras on this one device that you use with your Xbox, and what it gets is a 3D picture of anyone in front of it.
There's always the potential for these devices to get hacked or accessed somehow, you know, for nefarious purposes.
NARRATOR: Should Americans be concerned that their seemingly innocuous home gaming devices are really portals that hackers, or perhaps even the government- can use to look inside their homes? KAMKAR: There's no known cases of the Xbox Kinect being hacked.
However, the fact is, there is a camera that's in your living room, so if a hacker can find out the right way, it's possible to enable those devices and potentially monitor and listen to what's happening in your living room.
NARRATOR: Even though the Kinect camera hasn't been hacked into yet, could there be good reason to be wary of a breach at some point? There are those who claim the FBI has already used technology to secretly keep an eye on Americans in their own homes, with their own cameras, and without their consent.
KAMKAR: They can actually start rerecording from your Web cam on your computer without the light ever turning on.
This is something the FBI has had the ability to do for many years now.
They're not gonna employ that commonly because they don't necessarily want everyone to know.
NARRATOR: If Big Brother can spy on you from the street corner and peer into your home, is there really any escape? Some may try to run to the great outdoors.
But even there, could there be prying eyes watching from the sky? ZAID: You have no idea the NARRATOR: Midland City, Alabama, February 4, 2013.
FBI agents surround an underground bunker where 65-year-old kidnapper Jimmy Lee Dykes has a five-year-old boy held hostage.
During the tense standoff, the FBI secretly employs a high-tech spy machine to see just how Dykes is behaving during the hostage negotiations.
KESSLER: The FBI was able to use a drone to pinpoint, with infrared, exactly where the bad guy was in relation to the little child.
NARRATOR: When Dykes started to behave erratically with his gun, the FBI moved in on the bunker to rescue the boy.
KESSLER: The FBI was able to go in with the HRT team and wipe out the bad guy without harming the kid.
NARRATOR: Law enforcement officials applauded the use of the spy drone to help save the boy.
But could there have been the potential for its abuse? The Edward Snowden leaks revealed that America has not only been using spy drones for law enforcement- they've also been using them to spy on American citizens.
MARPET: Not only visually, with long-range cameras, but also over their Wi-Fi, also over electronics, picking up cell frequencies from your cell phones- all kinds of different things to get access to all the information about you: where you are, who you're talking to, what you're doing.
Snowden's leak showed that it was happening at a hugely larger level than we ever imagined.
NARRATOR: The spy drone leak was confirmed on June 18, 2013, by outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Mueller claims that the use of domestic spy drones was "very minimal" and "very seldom.
" But critics of domestic drones wonder if their potential for abuse outweighs any benefits for law enforcement.
MARPET: There are sheriff's departments buying drones.
Why would a sheriff's department need a drone? Well, they said, "Well, we want to find out where people are growing marijuana in the town limits, we want to make sure that traffic is flowing correctly.
" And that's why we need drones for the sheriff's department? Uh, sorry.
Maybe I'm a little out of touch, but that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
ZAID: What are the drones doing? You can't hear the drones, anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 and feet higher.
You have no idea the drones are there, but yet they can see into your house.
They can decide or determine if you are in your home and perhaps who you are that's in your home.
NARRATOR: Just how many Americans were targeted by the FBI's drone surveillance program? We may never know.
But critics argue that the Department of Defense's DARPA- or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency- is currently conducting more and more research into drones that are smaller, faster, and don't resemble what we think of as drones at all.
ANTHES: DARPA has been very interested in drones- that's no secret- and particularly tiny flying drones, really inconspicuous things that can maybe fly into buildings and conduct surveillance.
And so one scientist at DARPA realized that maybe they could use insects as a shortcut to their tiny flying drones because insects are already engineered for flying and they're capable of doing it for hours at a time.
NARRATOR: By implanting small electric components into the brains of insects like beetles, moths, and cockroaches, DARPA scientists have found that they can actually control the flight patterns of these insects by remote control.
ANTHES: The insects aren't any good if they just fly around doing whatever insect things they want to do.
They're only useful if they can be controlled as well as a machine, to turn in particular directions at particular speeds, flying at certain altitudes.
NARRATOR: But how could these cyborg insects really be used as drones? ANTHES: They'd want to load this insect up with various surveillance equipment.
The bigger the insect is, the more of a payload it can carry, things like video cameras or microphones, to conduct all sorts of surveillance tasks.
NARRATOR: Is this the future of aerial surveillance, the use of insects both real and even cybernetic? If so, where will the government's spy capabilities lead them next? There are those who believe it will be in the most shocking area of all, right within our very own bodies.
MULLER: Y NARRATOR: September 20, 2013.
Apple releases the iPhone 5s to great fanfare.
The device includes new technology that allows users to unlock their phone with a unique biological identifier, a fingerprint.
Consumers applaud the move as one way to make the pricy phones less likely to be stolen and hacked.
But just how secure is this revolutionary innovation? MARPET: There was actually I think it was a $40,000 bounty for the first person to hack the iPhone fingerprint.
It's been done.
There is a way now to take your fingerprint off of a Coke can or a wine glass, scan it and print it and then put it on the iPhone.
And guess what- it'll unlock your iPhone.
So your iPhone is already hacked in that fashion.
NARRATOR: Apple insists the fingerprint images won't be stored in any database.
In other words, even if someone were able to hack into Apple's records, they still wouldn't be able to access your fingerprint.
Even so, there are those who question whether Apple's new technology is just another way for the government to track its citizens.
JONES: The truth is, the NSA and hundreds of other private corporations and agencies are in a gold rush to steal and track every bit of data they can.
The level of technology they have makes 1984 look like a wonderful place to visit compared to this.
NARRATOR: There are some who argue that cell phones can already be used as a tracking device.
It has the capability of knowing a person's location at all times, even with the GPS locator turned off.
One such person is former computer hacker Samy Kamkar.
KAMKAR: In late 2010 I was researching geolocation with HTML5, and what it did was, you could go to a Web site, and it could tell you exactly where you were located to the physical address.
And I thought this was really interesting, and I looked into how this worked.
NARRATOR: When Kamkar investigated Google's database, he made an astonishing discovery.
The company was secretly storing subscribers' router addresses.
KAMKAR: I investigated that more, and I found that Google Street View cars are driving around, and while they're taking pictures for their maps program, they're also tracking where all these routers are and correlating it with the current GPS.
Google now knows that whenever they see this wireless network communicating with it, they would also know where that person was physically located.
(computer chirps) NARRATOR: Kamkar also discovered that cell phone companies seemed to be playing the same game.
He found that every phone carrier had created location databases.
And without their users' knowledge.
When the information was revealed, users were incensed.
But even after the wireless phone companies agreed to change their policies, the result was that many of the applications simply would not work when tracking features were turned off.
KAMKAR: You pretty much have to play their game if you want to use their services.
NARRATOR: Could this be Big Brother's ultimate master plan- forcing Americans to be digitally wired to corporate service providers in order to complete the most basic of day-to-day activities? CULLEN HOBACK: To be a member of modern society, you have to use Google, you have to use Facebook, you have to use LinkedIn.
These are services that people need for their jobs.
So, to say that we have a choice, that's an illusion.
NARRATOR: Even if some Americans were willing to try and forgo cell phone and e-mail use in their daily routines, could other monitoring technologies soon take their place? May 2010.
Critics allege President Barack Obama's health care bill will have a provision that requires all participants to be microchipped.
While the health care bill that ultimately passes contains no such mandate, there are many who believe that all Americans will eventually be microchipped.
MULLER: Rule number one in Obamacare is, everything has to be digitized.
Everything has to be digital.
You're gonna have the microchip.
As you walk past anyone, they can pull off that information, all of your personal medical history.
NARRATOR: Some suspect the government might even have an endgame to avoid implanting RFID chips into an unwilling American public.
In July 2012, the FDA approves the use of digestible microchips embedded in prescription drugs.
The stated reason for approval- the chips will help alert patients when to take their medication by sending a reminder to their cell phones.
But some worry- could these high-tech pills be used, instead, to spy on American citizens? JONES: A microchipped population and an RFID radio frequency tracking system is a real threat and is something being pushed by the establishment.
It was eight years ago that Mexico moved to make the senior law enforcement take implantable chips.
And the military is promoting the soldiers taking chips.
NARRATOR: Just how far will the government go to track an entire population? And to do so, would they need help from other secret sources? NARRATOR: Washington, D.
C.
, June 12, 2013.
NSA chief General Keith Alexander is questioned by the Senate Appropriations Committee about the agency's secret surveillance program.
JEFF MERKLEY: Here I have my cell phone.
What authorized investigation gave you the grounds for acquiring my cell phone data? NARRATOR: One of the most shocking allegations of the Edward Snowden leaks so far is the revelation of how the NSA secretly uses private, high-tech corporations to gather and collect data on American citizens through a super-secret program called PRISM.
A program that both the government and big business had been trying hard to keep hidden.
ZAID: PRISM is one of the programs we've come to learn as an NSA, essentially, data-mining function.
It is six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
It is amassing all of this information, particularly from, say, the nine big companies in the United States, and grabbing all their data and putting it into a prism.
A prism that then could be data-mined.
DRAKE: The Internet has become the single largest surveillance platform in history.
These are secret agreements with companies, and those are some of the most secret secrets that exist in the United States today.
It's just how closely aligned government and corporations are.
Snowden actually managed to find one of the secret court orders compelling Verizon to turn over every single phone record each and every day to NSA.
No probable cause.
A hundred million plus subscribers, and that's just Verizon.
NARRATOR: Some worry that our digital suppliers, in order to comply with PRISM, are holding records of our online and cell usage for a longer and longer period of time.
Possibly even forever.
HOBACK: I think one of the greatest secrets about Facebook is that we don't have access to all of the data that they're storing on us.
What you're not getting is how long you hovered over your ex's Facebook page.
What you're not getting is all of the deleted information that they're still storing about you.
It's all there, even though you've said that you deleted it.
They keep it in perpetuity.
NARRATOR: Americans may wonder, what do these huge corporations get in return for cooperating with the government? Could there be a secret reason why they'd want to comply? DRAKE: None of these companies have challenged the government, because they're in league with the government.
And if you look at the SEC filings, the 10X filings, you will see how much money Verizon actually receives from the government every year for providing this kind of information.
They're not doing this for free, believe me.
NARRATOR: So far there's been no known change to the NSA's data collection policies.
And if the government continues to collect our online data for companies that we trust, is there anything we can do to protect our online privacy? HOBACK: Our digital privacy has been eroded one click at a time.
I would say that privacy agreements are there to take away our privacy, not to actually guarantee it.
What companies are after is getting as much data and information from us as possible.
That's something that the government has also wanted for a very long time, a sort of unadulterated access to everything about us.
The problem with terms and conditions agreements is that they're designed not to be read.
Many of these things are 40 pages long.
So, do we have any choice in terms of negotiating these deals? No, we don't.
These companies are going to continue to take away our rights, and the government is going to benefit directly from that.
NARRATOR: So far big business and the federal government have claimed no wrongdoing.
But if their actions really are legitimate, why are both working so hard to keep them so secret? HOBACK: There's this unholy alliance that's formed between corporations and the government.
It's really allowed both of them to get something that they've wanted forever.
NARRATOR: But if our every communication, action, and thought is monitored by both government and big business, what exactly is their ultimate plan? NARRATOR: In the 2002 feature film Minority Report, a special high-tech police unit locates and arrests criminals before they commit their crimes.
Future murders are stopped solely by analyzing a suspect's intent to kill.
But is peering into the realm of a person's inner thoughts and motivations even possible, especially when they appear ordinary on the outside? Some believe the future of Big Brother involves just that- deciphering a person's intentions before he or she has a chance to act on them- and according to some experts, the future may already be here with a secret program created by the Department of Homeland Security, called FAST.
DICE: FAST stands for Future Attribution Screening Technology.
FAST is another creepy Orwellian government program that is almost like a lie detector on steroids.
It's a lie detector system that detects people's mal intent, where they can detect supposedly whether you have bad intentions.
NARRATOR: The system uses cameras and sensors to measure skin temperature, breathing, pulse rate, pupil dilation, and other physiological and behavioral patterns.
The ultimate goal? To recognize and stop a terrorist before they strike.
The technology will most likely be used at airports, national borders and special events.
But critics of the system argue there could be a massive potential for innocent people being targeted.
DICE: This is essentially an Orwellian mind-reading system.
The dangers with these systems is that they create a lot of false positives.
So if you're traveling, and you're nervous or you're sweating, you may create a false positive, and so you may be looked at as a terrorist.
NARRATOR: With the federal government sponsoring high-tech systems that attempt to read the minds of its own citizens, some Americans are wondering out loud, is the age of Big Brother upon us? And, if so, were Edward Snowden's leaks of NSA secrets justified? DRAKE: What he's revealing is the zero sum game.
In order to know anything about anybody or anything, we need to have it all.
We need to take it all, we need to collect it all.
It's like taking all of the sand on all the beaches of the world and dumping them into landfills, and then building a really expensive sieve to figure out what you have.
MULLER: Big Brother is controlling all the information- everything you do on the computer, everything you do on the phone- for your own good.
Whenever you hear "for your own good" from the government, or "for the children," you're about to lose some money or freedom, always.
NARRATOR: Can America ever return to a time when our calls, texts, and online correspondence are no longer subject to government search and analysis? Some believe that a new NSA data center in the remote Utah desert, spanning the area of 19 football fields, already gives us the answer.
HOBACK: Bluffdale, Utah, the NSA data center.
It can store- there are estimates between two billion and 14 billion gigabytes of information.
But what Bluffdale is really about is storing everything- all phone calls, all e-mails, all Internet transactions- so that it can be looked at at a future date.
NARRATOR: The sheer size and scope of the Bluffdale facility have many security experts wondering: is the purpose of the cavernous building really about uncovering terrorist communications? Or could it have a more ominous objective? HOBACK: So imagine for a second if you're a protester and you get caught and they bring you in.
Well, they can look at everything you might have said up until that point: relationips that you've had, friends that you've known.
And then they could potentially find all of your protester friends.
So the capabilities of storing our entire digital trail may very well lilie in this NSA Bluffdale data center.
MARPET: Could the government keep tabs on them? And keep track of them? And see how they vote? I think that's specifically against some amendments to our Constitution, but we'll see what actually happens.
NARRATOR: With massive NSA storage facilities, drones that fly overhead, and digestible microchips that track our location, some Americans wonder: in today's digital age, is the concept of privacy now extinct? RADACK: We are in danger of becoming a surveillance state, the government trying to convince people that this is being done in their name.
JONES: Knowledge is power.
And it's being used to create a technocratic dictatorship of informational control.
And that's really the heart of what the NSA and others are doing.
It's about intel, it's about data.
And it's not for American interest.
MULLER: This is frightening stuff, how we are turned into branded beasts that they move along.
Do you know what you and I are called to the IRS? "Inventory.
" You brand the cattle.
You microchip the inventory.
Keep an eye on 'em.
NARRATOR: If the government simply sees Americans as a commodity, who is to blame? A hierarchy of corporate and government interests so intertwined that they must monitor every American citizen? Or should we point the finger at ourselves and our own complacency? One thing is certain the age of Big Brother has not only arrived, it has only just begun.
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS Captioned by Media access.
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