As the National Security Agency (NSA) examines the communications of millions of people in the United States and around the world, they had someone keeping an eye on them as well.

Greenpeace on Friday flew its 135-foot blimp over the NSA’s Bluffdale, Utah, data facility. The blimp read “NSA—Illegal Spying Below” and “StandAgainstSpying.org.” The flight was sponsored by activist groups including Greenpeace and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

“We thought it would be fun to fly an airship around the Utah data center, which in many ways epitomizes the NSA’s collect-it-all strategy,” said Rainey Reitman of the EFF. “We wanted to have a way to symbolize that our movement is getting quite confrontational with NSA surveillance in a visceral way.”

The data center has been in the news recently for refusing to disclose its water consumption to a neighboring city and for technical problems that prevented its timely opening.

Greenpeace is a fellow plaintiff in a suit filed by EFF last year against the NSA for illegally collecting call records.

-Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Protestors Launch a 135-Foot Blimp Over the NSA’s Utah Data Center (by Andy Greenberg, Wired)

Diverse Groups Fly Airship Over NSA’s Utah Data Center to Protest Illegal Spying (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Massive New NSA Facility in Utah Ordered to Reveal Its Secrets…About Water Use (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)