June 7 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency’s
mission is to gather information about foreign terrorists and
foreign powers, not to carry out wholesale domestic
surveillance. Apparently, however, its technical capabilities
have outrun all existing legal constraints. It is routinely
vacuuming up data about the communications of all Americans and
copying information flowing from servers run by giant American
online companies.
The NSA, now constructing a massive $2 billion data-storage
facility just outside Salt Lake City that will presumably be
capable of chewing through everything each of us says, needs to
be newly reined in. After all, the most valuable intelligence is
information from people everywhere, and we have access to that
gold mine only if the U.S. remains a beacon to the world.
