The black box: Inside America's massive new surveillance centre

But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who keep to themselves. They too are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than 2km from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted builders are laying the groundwork for the newcomers' own temple and archive, a complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town's boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol building.

Rather than Bibles and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts and armed guards. These newcomers will be capturing, storing and analysing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world's telecommunications networks. In the town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbours.

The blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the US National Security Agency (NSA). A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade.Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyse and store vast amounts of the world's communications from satellites and underground and undersea cables of international, foreign and domestic networks.The heavily fortified $2 billion (£1.25 billion) centre should be operational in September 2013. Stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including private emails, mobile phone calls and Google searches, as well as personal data trails -- travel itineraries, purchases and other digital "pocket litter". It is the realisation of the "total information awareness" programme created by the Bush administration -- which was killed by Congress in 2003 after an outcry over its potential for invading privacy.