The National Security Agency, at least according to it’s Web site, “exists to protect the nation.” A recent Wired article claimed that the agency had taken up a new duty – spying on American citizens.

In an article titled, “The NSA Is Building The Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)”, Wired writer and NSA expert James Bamford detailed the agency’s new “Utah Data Center” that will spy on communications from around the world and from America’s own citizens.

Bamford described an NSA that has set up a national infrastructure tailored towards the collection and decryption of millions of messages sent from Americans to other Americans. It’s Big Brother at its best and Bamford claims it’s being done in total secrecy.

That alone is pretty damning of the NSA, but there’s more. Bamford talked to a lot of eyewitnesses and got the inside story of what may be a huge scandal if revealed to be true. Congress got wind of this story and invited NSA chief General Keith Alexander to defend his agency.

In all, he denied the allegations made in the Wired story a total of fourteen times. After explaining that the NSA doesn’t have the technical capability to spy on the sort of level described by Bamford, he replies to every other subsequent question with just a “no.”

Check out the video of the proceedings. You can decide for yourself if General Alexander was being truthful or not.

The Internet is pretty sensitive to these sort of allegations. Even if the NSA is not collecting information, the very thought is enough to send the Internet into a tizzy.

[Source: Wired]