America's most secretive buildings revealed: Photographer captures off-limit buildings which house NSA and other top U.S. intelligence agency headquarters

Revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies had been extracting personal information from people across the country were exposed by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden last year

The one photo the NSA have provided of their headquarters in Fort Meade, which is thought to have been taken in the 1970s



Inspired by the 'invisibility' of the U.S. intelligence community, artist Trevor Paglen rented a helicopter and took photos of three of the most powerful intelligence sites in the country



He has released the images into the public domain so that people can understand the agencies exist

America's vast surveillance infrastructure has been glimpsed for the first time after an artist took photos of three of the United States' most powerful intelligence sites - including the NSA - and making the images available to the public.

The photos were taken last year by Trevor Paglen, who used a helicopter to shoot the top-secret bureaus at night, Gawker reported.



The shots were published this week in the inaugural issue of new digital magazine The Intercept.

The three agencies captured are the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The National Security Agency (NSA): With a 2013 budget request of approximately $10.8 billion, the NSA is the second-largest agency in the U.S. intelligence community and is headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland Up until these photos were released, the media have been forced to use images of the NSA headquarters provided by the NSA themselves, which are thought to have been taken in 1970s The National Reconnaissance Office: The NRO is in charge of developing, deploying and operating secret reconnaissance satellites and is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia.

Spooky: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is responsible for collecting, analyzing and distributing intelligence derived from maps and imagery. According to documents provided by Edward Snowden, the NGA's budget request was $4.9 billion last year ¿ more than double its funding a decade ago. It is headquartered in Springfield, Virginia

Paglen said he took on the project because, as classified documents exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden dominated headlines for the last eight months, the one image being used by the media in the accompanying stories was one provided by the NSA themselves.

The image, available on Wikipedia, appears to have been taken in the 1970s, Paglen said.

'My intention is to expand the visual vocabulary we use to 'see' the U.S. intelligence community,' Paglen explained to The Intercept.

'Although the organizing logic of our nation's surveillance apparatus is invisibility and secrecy, its operations occupy the physical world.

'Digital surveillance programs require concrete data centers; intelligence agencies are based in real buildings; surveillance systems ultimately consist of technologies, people, and the vast network of material resources that supports them.'

Outdated: This image of the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade and used in many of the articles featuring Edward Snowden, is believed to have been taken in the 1970s. The facility, just outside of Baltimore, has been expanded extensively and received billions of dollars of grants



Crucially, Paglen has donated the images to the public domain and made them available on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons.

He wants people to know the agencies exist, and to feel civic ownership over them in the same way they feel ownership over their local library.

'The scale of NSA's operations were hidden from the public until August 2013, when their classified budget requests were revealed in documents provided by Snowden,' Paglen said.

'Three months later, I rented a helicopter and shot nighttime images of the NSA’s headquarters.

'I did the same with the NRO, which designs, builds and operates America’s spy satellites, and with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which maps and analyzes imagery, connecting geographic information to other surveillance data.

'The Central Intelligence Agency—the largest member of the intelligence community—denied repeated requests for permission to take aerial photos of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia.'

More:The Utah Data Center, near Bluffdale, was rumored to be one of the sites where personal data extracted by the NSA was stored

Storage: An aerial photograph shows the center

Stash: The government has been tight-lipped about what will be stored in the center's four 'data halls'

In June of last year, photos emerged of the one million square-foot, $1.9 million facility being constructed by the government in the Utah Valley.

The release coincided with the revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies had been extracting audio, video, photos, e-mails, documents and other information to track people's movements and contacts.

Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype, AOL and the lesser known Internet company PalTalk were revealed as all involved in the program PRISM, which the government insisted was for national security.



Officials were tight-lipped about what would be stored at the Utah Data Center based in Camp Williams, on the Salt Lake-Utah County line.

Plans released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the time of its construction showed the center had four 'data halls' to store information and two substations to power the facility.



Powerhouse: These images were released last year as it emerged the government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers, as well as data from companies including Facebook and Google

The spy center is estimated to have cost $1.9 billion and is said to employ 100 to 200 permanent employees.

The PRISM program was launched in 2007 with the blessing of special federal judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.



It has been described by NSA officials 'as the most prolific contributor to the president's Daily Brief' and the 'leading source of raw material', the Post reported.

In practice, if collection managers in the NSA's Special Source Operation Group, which manages PRISM, have suspicion that their target is a foreign national engaged in terrorism or a spy, they move ahead to draw in all the data which would often net in information on the suspect's contacts.

President Obama has maintained that data mining 'was worth us doing' to halt national security threats

'I think it’s important to understand that you can’t have 100 percent security and then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,' President Barack Obama said of the program last year.



'We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.'