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Protesters Launch a 135-Foot Blimp Over the NSA's Utah Data Center

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

Dega704 sends this news from Wired: Plenty of nightmare surveillance theories surround the million-square-foot NSA facility opened last year in Bluffdale, Utah. Any locals driving by the massive complex Friday morning saw something that may inspire new ones: A massive blimp hovering over the center, with the letters NSA printed on its side.

Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the 135-foot thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency's mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads 'NSA: Illegal Spying Below' along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL."

5 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So Fucking Awesome!

    That is all.

  2. They screwed up the website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Too bad they are so utterly tone-deaf that they put up a website that requires not just your zipcode but also your street address in order to look up your congressional representative's record on the NSA. Stupid web2.0 fuckheads couldn't at least include a link to a list of reps to pick from in case we didn't want to hand out our home address to god knows what data brokers? Even when I disabled noscript and disabled requestpolicy that damn lookup still wouldn't work either. Epic fucking fail.

  3. Re:The US government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > In my humble opinion, this means that apparently the Government doesn't think this datacenter is such a big deal, otherwise it would have been a no-fly zone

    Don't attribute to moral convictions what is more easily explained by simple incompetence.

  4. the NSA already thought of this. by nimbius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bluffdale Utah has a population of approximately 8000 residents who could at any time have seen the blimp, but the location of the site is so far to the outskirts of the city as to make it pointless. the only person who would see it immediately would be perhaps NSA employees entering and egressing, but its unlikely that theyd care.

    protesting over congress and capitol hill would make more sense, but thats illegal incursion into a longstanding no fly zone.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  5. "NSA! "We've got NSA here!" by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "See? Nobody cares."

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel