BY OVER EIGHT YEARS, U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA HAS CREATED THE MOST INTRUSIVE APPARATUS IN THE WORLD. TO WHAT END? ILLUSTRATIONS BY RAYMOND BIESINGER

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 57 THE FOUNDATIONS of Obama’s shadow state date back to the immediate post-9/11 period. Six weeks after the attacks, the THIS SUMMER, AT 1:51 P.M. ON SATURDAY, Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the government’s surveillance powers, was rushed through Congress and signed by President George W. Bush. A few months June 11, an unearthly roar shattered the ness. From 22,300 miles in space, where later, the Bush administration created afternoon quiet along the Florida coast. On seven Advanced Orion crafts now orbit; the Information Awareness Office, part Cape Canaveral, liquid fuel surged through to a 1-million-square-foot building in the of the Defense Advanced Research Projects the thick aluminum veins of a Delta IV Utah desert that stores data intercepted Agency (DARPA). That led to the devel- Heavy rocket nearly as tall as the U.S. Cap- from personal phones, emails, and social opment of the Total Information Aware- itol. Two million pounds of thrust in three media accounts; to taps along the millions ness program, designed to vacuum up vast symmetrical boosters fired the engines, of miles of undersea cables that encircle amounts of private electronic data—bank- sending the craft hurtling over the Atlan- the Earth like yarn, U.S. surveillance has ing transactions, travel documents, medi- tic Ocean into the heavens. Eighty sec- expanded exponentially since Obama’s cal files, and more—from citizens. After the onds after takeoff, it hit Mach 1, the speed inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009. media exposed and criticized the program, of sound. The effort to wire the world—or to which didn’t use warrants, Congress shut it The Delta IV Heavy, introduced in 2004, achieve “extreme reach,” in the NRO’s par- down in late 2003. Much of the operation, is the most powerful rocket in American lance—has cost American taxpayers more though, was simply transferred to the NSA. history, and this was only the ninth time it than $100 billion. Obama has justified the In 2005, the New York Times revealed had launched. Even more exclusive, how- gargantuan expense by arguing that “there that Bush had authorized the NSA to mon- ever, was its top-secret cargo: Inside its are some trade-offs involved” in keeping the itor the international electronic communi- nearly seven-story-high nose cone was an country safe. “I think it’s important to rec- cations “of hundreds, perhaps thousands, Advanced Orion, the world’s largest satel- ognize that you can’t have 100 percent secu- of people in the United States.” Code- lite. About eight hours after launch, when rity and also then have 100 percent privacy named , the program inter- the most advanced spy craft ever built went and zero inconvenience,” he said in June cepted telephone conversations, emails, into geosynchronous orbit, it unfurled its 2013, shortly after , a for- and from taps inside AT&T facil- gigantic mesh antenna, larger than a foot- mer contractor with the National Security ities and from satellites. Each day, mil- ball field, and began eavesdropping on the Agency (NSA), revealed widespread gov- lions of communications were scanned for Earth below. ernment spying on Americans’ phone calls. addresses and keywords associated with al The mission’s patch, dubbed “epic/ter- Since Snowden’s leaks, pundits and Qaeda. Any leads were sent to the FBI. (A rifying” by the Verge, depicted a masked, experts (myself included) have debated the secret internal analysis conducted by the armored knight standing defensively legality and ethics of the U.S. surveillance bureau in 2006 indicated that no informa- before an American flag. A sword strapped apparatus. Yet has the president’s blueprint tion from Stellar Wind had proved useful.) to his back bore a cross-guard resembling for spying succeeded on its own terms? The same week the Times investiga- a set of claws. According to the National An examination of the unprecedented tion was published, Obama, then a sena- Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the intelli- architecture reveals that the Obama , gave a speech defending civil liberties gence agency responsible for the satellite, administration may only have drowned and asking the Senate to hold off on voting the image delivered “a message of tena- itself in data. What’s more, in trying to to reauthorize the Patriot Act. “If someone cious, fierce focus … representing extreme right the ship, America’s intelligence cul- wants to know why their own government reach with global coverage.” ture has grown frenzied. Agencies are ever has decided to go on a fishing expedition In a sense, this was a fitting tribute to seeking to get bigger, move faster, and pry through every personal record or private President Barack Obama as his adminis- deeper to keep pace with the enormous document … this legislation gives peo- tration entered its last six months in the quantity of information being generated ple no rights to appeal the need for such White House. Over his two terms, Obama the world over and with the new tactics a search in a court of law,” the former con- has created the most powerful surveillance and technologies intended to shield it stitutional law professor declared. “This is state the world has ever seen. Although from spies. just plain wrong.” other leaders may have created more This race is a defining feature of Obama’s Obama rode a wave of negative public oppressive spying regimes, none has legacy—and one that threatens to become opinion on . In January come close to constructing one of equiv- never-ending, even after he’s left the 2006, a Zogby Analytics poll showed that, alent size, breadth, cost, and intrusive- White House. by a margin of 52 to 43 percent, Americans

58 SEPT | OCT 2016 wanted Congress to consider impeaching as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. “In a phone interceptions, planes, drones, sat- Bush if he wiretapped citizens without a dangerous world,” he wrote on a campaign ellites, and other sensors into a powerful judge’s approval. Obama then carried the blog, “government must have the authority computer analysis system known as the opposition narrative into his White House to collect the intelligence we need to pro- Real Time Regional Gateway. He also ran bid. In late 2007, he publicly promised, “No tect the American people.” From a prag- the NSA’s massive metadata surveillance more secrecy. That’s a commitment that I matic perspective, Obama was also heading program, which involved secretly keeping make to you as president…. That means no into the last push for the presidency and track of every phone in the United States: more illegal wiretapping of American citi- needed to appeal to the broader electorate, what numbers were called, from where, zens.” He even vowed to support a filibuster which viewed terrorism as a bigger threat and exactly when—billions of communi- of any bill that gave retroactive immunity than his liberal base did. cations each year. to companies providing assistance to gov- After being elected, Obama staffed up One of the few people with the security ernment spies. (PRISM, a secretive program with intelligence officials who supported clearance to witness Alexander in action to gather data from major compa- mass surveillance. Brennan became his was Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign nies that was later revealed in Snowden’s chief counterterrorism advisor (and, a few Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). leaks, was launched in 2007.) years later, director of the CIA). Maureen He didn’t like what he saw, particularly Yet as his campaign progressed, Obama’s Baginski, the NSA’s former director of sig- that the NSA did not have “reasonable and stance hardened. Overseas, scores of peo- nals intelligence, a job that had placed her articulable suspicion” to justify monitoring ple were being killed in Iraq by suicide in charge of wiretapping, joined the transi- some 90 percent of targets in its metadata bombings; at home, opponents were ham- tion team that helped establish policy for program. In a January 2009 opinion, Wal- mering Obama for being weak on terror- the NSA and other spy agencies. ton wrote that he was “exceptionally con- ism. Amid this shifting political climate, Most notable, though, was Obama’s deci- cerned” that the agency was operating in he brought in John Brennan, a former CIA sion to keep the NSA’s chief in place. Keith “flagrant violation” of the FISC’s orders deputy director, as his top intelligence Alexander, a three-star general who’d led regarding privacy. Two months later, he advisor. During the Bush years, Brennan the agency since 2005, was a force to be accused the NSA of making “material had supported the very policies Obama reckoned with. “We jokingly referred to misrepresentations” to the court, which campaigned against. Within months, his him as Emperor Alexander—with good in less polite language is known as lying. influence on the candidate was evident. cause, because whatever Keith wants, He pointed the finger at Alexander, writ- In July 2008, Obama reversed his earlier Keith gets,” a former senior CIA official ing that the general’s explanation for why his agency had been eavesdropping ille- gally on tens of thousands of Americans— AMERICA’S INTELLIGENCE CULTURE essentially, that he thought privacy restric- tions applied only to certain archived HAS GROWN FRENZIED. data—“strains credulity.” Walton con- cluded that oversight of metadata gath- AGENCIES ARE EVER SEEKING ering “has never functioned effectively.” TO GET BIGGER, MOVE FASTER, Yet Obama didn’t dismiss Alexander. In fact, the following year, the general was AND PRY DEEPER. awarded a fourth star and tapped to lead the newly minted, top-secret U.S. Cyber Command. And rather than limit the NSA chief’s collect-it-all regime, the president promises, announcing support for a sweep- told me. “We would sit back literally in awe authorized its expansion. ing surveillance law that largely legalized of what he was able to get from Congress, the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping pro- from the White House, and at the expense FOR THE OBAMA administration, the next gram and granted immunity to telecom of everybody else.” Alexander’s preferred frontier in spying was being able to eaves- companies that aided in spying. spying method was blunt. According to a drop on every single person in a country Many of Obama’s supporters were hor- document leaked by Snowden, while vis- by obtaining “full-take audio” of all cell- rified. “I am disgusted,” one wrote on the iting Menwith Hill station, the NSA’s giant phone conversations. For this new pro- candidate’s website. “Obama will NOT listening post in England, in June 2008, gram, code-named SOMALGET, it needed a receive my vote in November.” But the Alexander asked, “Why can’t we collect all testing ground. The Bahamas—small, con- Democratic nominee justified his switch the signals all the time?” He applied this tained, peaceful, 50 miles from the Florida by pointing to violent threats in places such approach in Iraq, pulling intelligence from coast—fit the bill.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 59 In 2009, not long after Obama had taken that, on cables that could transfer upwards The $286 million, 604,000-square-foot office, the NSA gained access to Bahamian of 21 petabytes of information daily; this facility has more than 2,500 workstations communications networks by subterfuge. included a large slice of the internet, which and 47 conference rooms, and it employs The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administra- could be stored for three days before being more than 4,000 eavesdroppers and other tion got legal permission to plant moni- replaced by new data, and some 600 mil- personnel who focus on the Middle East. toring equipment in the nation’s telecom lion “telephone events” every 24 hours. Earphones on, facing their computers, systems by convincing the islands’ govern- In 2010, not long after becoming oper- employees sit in cubicles and listen to ment that the operation would help catch ational, the program grew to be so suc- “cuts,” or intercepted conversations. “It’s drug dealers. Really, though, it opened cessful that the GCHQ boasted it had very near real time,” Adrienne Kinne, a a backdoor for the NSA so that it could the “biggest internet access” of any Five former intercept operator at the complex, tap, record, and store cellular data. “[O]ur Eyes member. “This is a massive amount told me a few years ago. “We would just covert mission is the provision of SIGINT of data!” acknowledged an agency Pow- get these thousands of cuts dumped on [],” a document leaked erPoint later made public by Snowden. us … [from] Iraq, Afghanistan, and a whole by Snowden stated. The host country was Another leaked document declared, “We swath of area. We would get [calls in] Tajik, “not aware.” are in the golden age.” Uzbek, Russian, Chinese.” Within two years, SOMALGET would To sift through everything, 250 NSA As of 2013, the NSA had spent upwards achieve its goal of 100 percent surveil- analysts joined forces with about 300 of $300 million to expand a former Sony lance in the Bahamas—all without legal from the GCHQ. Using computer sys- chip-fabrication plant near San Antonio warrants. This included spying on the cell tems, they searched for data containing and turn it into the agency’s principal lis- phones of some 6 million U.S. citizens who any of 71,000 “selectors,” such as key- tening post for the Caribbean and Cen- visit or reside in the country each year; words, email addresses, or phone num- tral and South America. About 900 miles notable celebrities with homes there are bers. Internally, this work was dubbed northwest, it was also constructing a new Bill Gates, John Travolta, and Tiger Woods. Mastering of The Internet (MTI). A leaked operations building at Buckley Air Force The NSA didn’t stop with the Bahamas, 2010 GCHQ document stated, “MTI deliv- Base near Denver. The mission was to col- however. It eventually deployed SOMAL- ered the next big step in the access, pro- lect intercepted communications from GET in Afghanistan, which brought the cessing and storage journey.” In a single spy satellites, including Advanced Orions, total number of conversations recorded and stored by the program to “over 100 million call events per day,” according to leaked agency files. It also began collecting metadata from phones in the Philippines, INTO THE NSA’S BLUFFDALE, UTAH FACILITY Mexico, and Kenya. NSA planning docu- WOULD FLOW ments in 2013 anticipated further uses in EMAILS, TEXTS, TWEETS, other countries. FINANCIAL RECORDS, FACEBOOK POSTS, In some cases, the Obama administra- YOUTUBE VIDEOS, AND tion cooperated with foreign governments TELEPHONE CHATTER. to expand its reconnaissance capabilities. This included members of the , a clandestine alliance of intelligence agen- cies in the United States, the United King- day, the file continued, a GCHQ surveil- and ground stations like Menwith Hill, dom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand lance operation known as Tempora had then transmit the data through fiber-optic that dates back to the Cold War. During captured, stored, and analyzed some 39 cables to analysts at their desks near Savan- Obama’s first three years in office, the U.S. billion pieces of information. nah, San Antonio, and at other NSA out- government paid the British equivalent of posts. Meanwhile, in January 2012, the NSA the NSA, the Government Communica- THE ACCELERATION of surveillance required opened a $358 million listening post on the tions Headquarters (GCHQ), at least $150 a construction boom of a scale unprece- island of Oahu targeting Asian and Pacific million to enhance surveillance. Because dented in the history of U.S. intelligence. countries. Upon its debut, Alexander said undersea fiber-optic cables from North On March 5, 2012, Alexander opened what in a news release that the facility’s goal “is and South America transit the United is likely the world’s largest listening post, to produce foreign signals intelligence for Kingdom on their way to Europe and the about 130 miles north of Savannah, Geor- decision-makers as global terrorism now Middle East, the GCHQ was in an ideal gia; members of the press were warned jeopardizes the lives of our citizens, mili- position to place taps on them. It did just not to bring cameras within two miles. tary forces, and international allies.”

60 SEPT | OCT 2016 other information is eventually erased to make room for more on the servers. Outside the facility, there’s been the occasional protest. In June 2014, a bul- bous, 135-foot-long blimp appeared in the sky bearing a giant sign that read, “NSA Illegal Spying Below.” Inside were repre- sentatives from a coalition of grassroots groups dedicated to privacy. “We’re fly- ing an airship over the ,” a written statement from one participating organization, the Electronic Frontier Foun- dation, proclaimed, “which has come to symbolize the NSA’s collect-it-all approach to surveillance.”

ALTHOUGH THE EFFORT to gather every pos- sible bit of information follows a certain logic—the more you have, the more likely you are to find what you’re looking for—it is complicated by what NSA officials refer to as the three V’s. “Inside [the] NSA, we often say that’s the volume, velocity, vari- ety issue,” Alexander’s deputy, Chris Inglis, told an audience of intelligence officials in 2010, “an enormous quantity of informa- tion moving ever faster and coming at us in very complex forms.” Obama’s surveillance architecture, it seems, has done little to address this multi- faceted problem. In fact, it may have made it worse. Privacy hasn’t been traded for Not to be left out, Menwith Hill also The $2 billion, 1-million-square-foot com- security, but for the government hoard- underwent a multimillion-dollar expan- plex was set to function as the centerpiece ing more data than it knows how to han- sion. Like a moon base hidden in the roll- of the NSA’s global eavesdropping opera- dle. Kinne, the former intercept operator, ing Yorkshire hills, the station’s 33 giant tions. Into it would flow streams of emails, described her work as “just like searching golf-ball-like radomes house parabolic text messages, tweets, Google searches, blindly through all these cuts to see what antennas capable of 2 million intercepts financial records, Facebook posts, YouTube the hell was what.” an hour from communications satellites. videos, metadata, and telephone chatter In the wake of the Snowden leaks, To better analyze data at the post, in 2012, picked up by the constellation of satellites, administration officials tried hard to jus- the NSA added powerful supercomputers cable taps, and listening posts by then in tify the secret collection of Americans’ and boosted personnel from 1,800 to 2,500. operation. telephone records. “We know of at least That November, Obama was re-elected For intelligence analysts, the Bluffdale 50 threats that have been averted because following a campaign that centered almost facility serves as a sort of “cloud,” or exter- of this information,” Obama said during a exclusively on domestic and economic nal hard drive, for intercepted data. About visit to Berlin in 2013. He offered no specific issues; little attention was paid to surveil- 200 people tend to some 10,000 racks of examples. Alexander, meanwhile, claimed lance and privacy. (The Snowden leaks humming, blinking servers containing numerous times to the media and in public were still more than six months down the trillions of words and thoughts sucked up speeches that “54 different terrorist-related road.) Beyond the campaign trail, how- from unsuspecting people. Some areas of activities” had been thwarted. But he, too, ever, on high ground in Bluffdale, Utah, the complex contain data considered criti- offered no examples. construction was in progress on the pièce cal, such as calls and emails to and from key On Oct. 2, 2013, when called to testify de résistance of Obama’s shadow empire. members of al Qaeda and the Islamic State; before the Senate Judiciary Commit-

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 61 tee, the general backtracked. Alexander The NSA has at least considered sextillion bytes,” the NGA states. “Described cited only one instance when an intercept employing similar tactics in the United in more familiar terms, this is the equiva- detected a potential threat: a Somali taxi States. In a top-secret memo dated Oct. 3, lent of every person on the planet having driver living in San Diego who sent $8,500 2012, Alexander raised the possibility of 174 newspapers delivered daily.” Viewed to al-Shabab, his home country’s notorious using vulnerabilities discovered in mass another way, that’s more data than 7 billion terrorist group. That winter, a panel set up data—“viewing sexually explicit material Libraries of Congress could hold. by Obama to review the NSA’s operations online,” for instance—to damage reputa- In the surveillance state Obama has built, concluded that the agency had stopped no tions. The agency could, say, smear indi- this deluge threatens to bury the few nee- terrorist attacks. “We found none,” Geoffrey viduals it believed were radicalizing others dles that might exist—warnings of attacks, Stone, a University of Chicago law profes- in an effort to diminish their influence. signals of radicalizing groups, rallying cries sor and one of five panel members, bluntly Obama, meanwhile, has taken virtually of extremist recruiters—even deeper in the told NBC News in December 2013. Since no steps to fix what ails his spying appa- proverbial haystack. So, too, does encryp- then, despite mass surveillance both at ratus. After the Snowden revelations, the tion: Once a tool used mostly by spy agen- home and abroad, shootings or bombings president called for ending the NSA’s col- cies and militaries, encryption is becoming have occurred in San Bernardino, Califor- lection of metadata from phone calls by commonplace in everyday digital chatter to nia; Orlando, Florida; Paris; Brussels; and U.S. citizens. But this represents a rare keep government eyes and ears out. Gmail Istanbul—to name just a few places. tremor in the surveillance state. More con- offers it. WhatsApp began providing its bil- Beyond failures to create security, there sistently, Obama has limited oversight. In lion-plus users with automatic encryption is the matter of misuse or abuse of U.S. his first year as president, he threatened to in April. In July, Facebook announced that spying, the effects of which extend well veto a bill from his own party that would it would soon give the option of end-to-end beyond violations of Americans’ con- have required him to brief all members encryption on its Messenger app. More ser- stitutional liberties. In 2014, I met with of congressional intelligence committees vices will surely follow. Snowden in Moscow for a magazine about covert operations, as opposed to the Speed is a critical component in break- assignment. Over pizza in a hotel room much smaller “Gang of Eight,” made up of ing encryption because most codes are not far from Red Square, he told me that top-ranking party and committee leaders based on factoring extremely large prime the NSA puts innocent people in danger. and created in the Bush era to shield ille- numbers. Conducting what’s known as In his experience, for instance, the agency gal activities from scrutiny. Gang brief- a “brute force” attack—trying every pos- routinely had passed raw, unredacted ings, former White House counterterrorism sible combination of digits—using even intercepts of millions of phone calls and czar Richard Clarke told Rachel Maddow the most powerful computers in operation emails from Arab- and Palestinian-Amer- in 2009, were often a “farce.” would take centuries or longer to succeed. icans to its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200. While keeping critics at bay, the Obama Obama, though, signed an execu- Once in Israeli hands, Snowden feared, this administration has gone after people blow- tive order in July 2015 urging the cre- information might be used to extort infor- ing the whistle on intelligence abuses. The ation of an exaflop supercomputer—a mation or otherwise harm relatives of the Justice Department has charged eight machine about 30 times faster than any- individuals being spied upon. leakers—more than double the num- thing in existence. It would be capable That September, after my interview with ber under all previous presidents com- of conducting more than a quintillion Snowden was published, 43 members of bined. “[T]his trend line should be going (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) operations Unit 8200 quit their posts in moral pro- in the opposite direction,” an ACLU lawyer per second. The president’s charge to build test. They charged publicly that Israel used argued in a 2014 blog post. “The modern was mostly targeted at the scientific com- intercepted communications, like those national security state is more power- munity; behind the scenes, however, the sent to it by the NSA, to inflict “political ful than ever—more powerful even than NSA has been preparing to breach the exa- persecution” on Palestinians. They said during the Cold War. It demands demo- flop barrier since 2011. data were gathered on sexual orientations, cratic accountability.” That year, the agency secretly built a infidelities, money problems, family med- 260,000-square-foot facility at the Oak ical conditions, and other private matters THE NATIONAL Geospatial-Intelligence Ridge National Laboratory in Tennes- and then used as tools of coercion—to force Agency (NGA) released a report in June see, the same place where the Manhattan targets into becoming Israeli collaborators, detailing what it calls a “data tsunami.” By Project developed the atomic bomb. Its for example. “[T]he intelligence is used to the end of this decade, there will be any- research focuses on hitting the computing apply pressure to people, to make them where from 50 billion to 200 billion net- speed that would not only give the agency cooperate with Israel,” one member of the worked devices on a planet of some 8 billion an edge over encryption, but also provide it dissenting group, who asked that his name people. “For the intelligence community, with better cataloging capabilities to tackle not be used, told . this equates to 40 zettabytes of data, or 1 the ocean of data already arriving daily at

62 SEPT | OCT 2016 complexes like the one in Bluffdale, Utah. the surveillance state to seize every bit of them,” she told an audience at a San Fran- The government is also finding ways power that its backers, including Obama, cisco technology summit in August 2014. to cheat, most notably through Bullrun, have sought to give it. Donald Trump’s rhetoric, meanwhile, a code-named program run jointly by the After the White House panel set up to suggests that he would prioritize making NSA and the GCHQ. The agencies clan- review NSA surveillance in 2013 suggested America’s surveillance empire as powerful destinely collaborate with technology halting efforts to undermine commercial as possible. “I think security has to preside, companies and internet service provid- encryption, the president demurred. In and it has to be preeminent,” he told Fox ers to “insert vulnerabilities into commer- a speech—one of the few he’s given on News in June 2015. Trump has also said cial encryption systems,” as reported by surveillance in his second term—Obama NSA reconnaissance is just a fact of modern the Guardian. As of 2010, according to a kept to the middle of the political road. American life. “I assume that when I pick top-secret GCHQ PowerPoint, the NSA had “We have to make some important deci- up my telephone, people are listening to already achieved a breakthrough: “Vast sions about how to protect ourselves and my conversations,” he told radio host Hugh amounts of encrypted Internet data which sustain our leadership in the world, while Hewitt last December, implying that Amer- icans should just get used to being spied on. Whistleblowers, it seems, would not fare QUANTUM COMPUTING COULD well under a Trump administration. “If I were president, [Russian President Vlad- BE A GAMECHANGER imir] Putin would give him over,” Trump IN U.S. INTELLIGENCE. said of Snowden in a July 2015 appearance IT WOULD BREAK THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE on CNN. In 2013, speaking on Fox & Friends, AGAINST GOVERNMENT he was even tougher. “I think Snowden is INTRUSION. a terrible threat. I think he’s a terrible trai- tor, and you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country?” Trump asked. “You know what we used to do to traitors, right?” One of the have up till now been discarded are now upholding the civil liberties and privacy hosts interjected, “Well, you killed them, exploitable,” the leaked slides state. By protections that our ideals and our Consti- Donald.” Trump agreed. 2015, the British agency hoped to have tution require,” he said. “We need to do so This is Obama’s legacy on surveillance: a cracked the encryption of 15 major inter- not only because it is right, but because the shadow state of brick and mortar, hardware net companies. challenges posed by threats like terrorism, and software, satellites and eavesdroppers, Looking further into the future, Obama’s and proliferation, and cyberattacks are not that is ready to grow on the next president’s NSA has also explored quantum comput- going away anytime soon.” command. How big is too big, though, is a ing—technology that, theoretically, could Zack Whittaker, the security editor for question the outgoing president has never defeat encryption for good. Its science ZDNet, summed up Obama’s remarks in a answered fully. At what point does gath- breaks all the rules. Today, data are stored headline: “Keep calm and carry on spying.” ering data become an end in itself, rather in binary bits—either ones or zeros—but than a means to an end? Is the U.S. gov- in quantum computing, so-called qubits WHOEVER WINS the upcoming presiden- ernment already there or approaching it? could be both one and zero at the same tial election will probably do just that. In Unless answers come, 50 years from time. This would allow for almost incom- response to the Orlando shooting in June, now, the world may look back at Obama’s prehensible operating speeds. According Hillary Clinton said, “I have proposed an architecture of surveillance—full of to documents released by Snowden, the intelligence surge to bolster our capabil- radomes, windowless walls, phone taps, NSA has been working to build “a cryp- ities across the board with appropriate and double-ringed fences—with the same tologically useful quantum computer” as safeguards here at home”—but offered no puzzled astonishment that 1950s bomb part of a research program broadly called details on what that would entail. She has shelters elicit today. Q Penetrating Hard Targets. called for Snowden to return from Russia Ultrafast computing could be a game- and face trial, and while supporting the end JAMES BAMFORD (@WashAuthor) is a colum- changer in U.S. intelligence. It would break of the NSA’s metadata program, she’s sug- nist for FOREIGN POLIC and the author of the last line of defense against government gested that the agency never broke the law. The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA intrusion. Though this wouldn’t necessar- “I think it’s fair to say the government, the From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on Amer- ily—or even likely—guarantee that security NSA, didn’t, so far as we know, cross legal ica. He also writes and produces docu- threats could be identified, it would allow lines, but they came right up and sat on mentaries for PBS.

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