The Bluffdale NSA Data Center is a purpose-built National Security Agency facility in the Utah desert. John Kiriakou characterizes the facility’s storage capacity as sufficient “to hold every phone call, every text message, every email from every American for the next 500 years.”[1][2]
Legal context
Kiriakou frames the facility against the explicit prohibition in the NSA charter against the interception of communications of U.S. citizens: “It is against the law for the CIA to spy on Americans. Period. … And it’s actually a part of NSA’s charter that they cannot spy on Americans. … And that’s practically all they do.”[1][2]
FBI metadata purchasing
A related practice — the contemporary FBI ability to acquire any American’s communications metadata from carriers without a warrant — is, per Kiriakou, similarly normalized: “Even the FBI no longer has to get a warrant to take your communications. The metadata from your communications is for sale. All they have to do is call T-Mobile and say, ‘Hey, I want Julian Dorey’s communications. Here’s the five grand that you charge.’”[2]