Color me not shocked that our "mainstream" corporate media didn't touch this story this week, but Democracy Now did. I read James Bamford's article at Wired.com the other day and to call it deeply disturbing that this level of data mining and access to all of our personal information is going on with little or no scrutiny is an understatement, to put it mildly.

The type of abuses that can go on from this type of access to everyone's information is frightening and I don't know what it's going to take to finally put a stop to it, but here we are with a society that would have George Orwell turning over in his grave. But hey, the head of the NSA denied that we are actually spying on our own citizens and that this center would have the capabilities Bamford wrote about, so I feel so much better now.

Here's the lead up for the Democracy Now post and you can read the full transcript at their site -- Exposed: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center in Bluffdale, Utah:

A new exposé in Wired Magazine reveals details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program codenamed "Stellar Wind." We speak with investigative reporter James Bamford, who says the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas.

The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital "pocket litter." "The NSA has constantly denied that they’re doing things, and then it turns out they are doing these things,"

Bamford says in response to NSA Director General Keith Alexander’s denial yesterday that U.S. citizens’ phone calls and emails are being intercepted. "A few years ago, President Bush said before camera that the United States is not eavesdropping on anybody without a warrant, and then it turns out that we had this exposure to all the warrantless eavesdropping in the New York Times article. And so, you have this constant denial and parsing of words."

You can read Bamford's article at Wired here -- The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say).