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This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.Just one that I’m aware of, and his story is nothing short of amazing. When you hear this man’s story, at some points you are proud of him, and at other times you are in disbelief of how self-destructive he once was and how much it hurt those who loved him. You’re in awe of the enormous obstacles he overcame to be one of the most elite warriors in the world when 99.9999% of others would have quit and felt sorry for themselves. You hear his story and you laugh because he was a funny man, a big goofy kid at heart who wasn’t afraid to be himself in front of anyone. You feel pathos mixed with anger when you learn what happened when his demons would get the better part of him, and waves of sentimentality sweep over you as you read the heartfelt journal he wrote to his young children during the times he was deployed to war zones.Had I not known that his was a true story, I never would have believed it. I probably would have laughed at the implausibility of all of it. But the story is true, and so is the pain and pride that people feel when they remember the life of a man named Adam Brown.** Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Adam BrownI never had the honor of meeting Adam Brown, but after learning about what kind of a man he was I feel that this photograph conveys a good image of what he was like. There were many images to choose from, but I kept coming back to this one in particular. Adam Brown was a walking contradiction: an incredibly loving husband and father who used to help teach his kids Sunday school class by pretending to be animals from Noah’s Ark, a battle-hardened Navy DEVGRU (aka SEAL Team Six) warrior and veteran of multiple deployments…and he was also a recovering crack cocaine addict.It was Adam’s wish that if he was killed in action someone would share his story with the world. He wanted to be certain that his story would include, along with his heroic actions and successes, his multiple failures and battle with addiction.Adam was an affable young man who always respected his elders and would go out of his way to help other kids his age who were being bullied, even though he was on the small side himself. He was a near straight-A student in high school as well as being a star player on his Hot Springs Arkansas champion football team. As one his coaches put it, “Brown wasn’t the biggest player, but he always had the most heart”.He was a “please and thank you, yes sir, no sir” kind of adolescent that his parents could trust not to get too out of control while others his age were out doing stupid things that could have gotten them hurt or in trouble with the law. That’s not to say Adam was quiet and reserved. His peers said he could be a “madman”. The climax of his daredevil days as a youth in Hot Springs was when he jumped out of the back of a moving truck as it sped across a bridge. Adam fell about 50 feet until he hit the dark river below. He was mimicking a scene out of the Charlie Sheen movie, “Navy SEALS”. Adam Brown, much unlike the rest of us, had no fear.Sometime after beginning college, he became re-acquainted with an old girlfriend, Cindy, who had since gone on to develop a miserable drug habit. Adam, who up until that time counted southern whiskey as his strongest inebriant, through the prodding of his girlfriend agreed to try crack cocaine. He later recounted that one time was all it took to get him hooked. Before long, it was all he wanted and all he could think about. He dropped out of college and spent all of his time with his new found loves hanging out in crack houses.After a while of being high all day every day, he switched from smoking the drug to injecting it directly into his veins. He began to add meth to the mix. When he attempted to quit, he would tell those trying to help him that the drug “called to him”. For the longest time he could not, or would not, resist the call.Then, as all addicts eventually do, he hit bottom. Cindy, his constant companion, left him. He became so despondent that one New Year’s Eve, high out of his mind on crack, he began repeatedly stabbing himself in the neck with a knife. A friend found him passed out in a pool of his own blood and called 911. Police that arrived along with emergency personnel discovered that Adam had active felony warrants for his arrest due to drug-related charges. Before long, he was in jail facing 11 felony charges. One was for the theft of a handgun.Previously his father would bail him out and pay hefty fines when Adam wound up in jail. Not this time. He was left to face up to what he had become. During his hearing the judge must have seen something positive in young Adam, because he let him choose between a jail sentence or a year-long stint in drug rehab at a highly regimented Christian based drug treatment program by the name of Teen Challenge. Adam chose against going to jail. At the program, he had a spiritual awakening that would last the remainder of his days. He turned his life over to God and asked Him to point to the path he was supposed to take.After he finished his year at Teen Challenge (despite the name Adam was now in his early 20’s), he met a beautiful young woman who would eventually become his wife. Her name was Kelley Trippy. Kelley shared in Adam’s strong Christian beliefs, and for a while their time together was bliss. However, she had known about his past and always kept it in the back of her mind. One day it was moved to the front when Adam didn’t show up for a date. Adam had never been late before. Kelley began looking for Adam and found him, foul smelling and disheveled, sitting on the floor in a local crack house.** Adam and KelleyAdam promised never to do it again….but he did…over and over. Brown needed direction, and needed it fast or Kelley vowed to leave him for good. His search for direction led him to a US Navy recruiting office. The father of one of Brown’s very best friends growing up was a high ranking Naval officer. His buddy was going into the Navy as an aviator, so Adam thought he might give the Navy a shot as well.Everything at the recruiter’s office went well until they got to the part of the interview where Adam was asked if he ever did drugs and if he had ever been arrested. Brown was very candid with the recruiter, who was taken aback, and asked him if this was some kind of joke. Surely a recovering crack addict who had been arrested on 11 felony charges didn’t think the Navy would accept him.The story would have ended there, but Adam noticed a photo of his childhood friend’s father hanging in the office. Turns out he was the highest ranking officer in that recruiting district. Pointing to the photo, Brown said, “Give him a call, he’ll vouch for me.” After a lot of convincing, the recruiter grudgingly made the call. The officer, remembering the well-mannered, level-headed Brown of his youth, said he would vouch for him. “Treat him as if he were my own son”, he said. The required waivers were signed, and Adam Brown was in the Navy.Adam and Kelley were secretly married in a civil ceremony before he left for boot camp. He was allowed to report with only the clothes on his back and five dollars cash. Kelley wouldn’t let him take the cash because she felt he might be tempted to look for drugs if he had money.** Brown as a new recruit.Not being the kind to want to be stuck on a ship out to sea for months at a time, Brown looked for a more adventurous assignment. He thought about a movie he watched in high school, Navy SEALs, and said, “I’ll do that”. From that point on Adam Brown achieved almost everything he put his mind to. He was one of the very few to remain in the SEAL candidate training that ran concurrent to his boot camp.He was accepted into BUD/S and completed the tortuous training and Hell Week with no issues. It was in dive phase of his SEAL training where he did find problems that he couldn’t immediately overcome, so he was recycled into the next class. He made it past dive phase with no issues on the second go around.He was assigned to SEAL Team FOUR at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, right outside of Virginia Beach. This is where he earned the nickname, “Blade”. Immediately before a training mission, he was using his knife to cut away a zip tie that was binding some gear together. He pulled towards himself with all his might and the zip tie gave way and the knife stuck him right between the eyes. Bleeding profusely, and most definitely in need of medical attention, the new SEAL covered his wound with a cloth and insisted he was fine and that there was no need to hold up the mission. Hours later, after participating fully in the successful training mission, Brown was taken to the Emergency Room due to the volume of blood he lost. He received a few stitches. Adam Brown never was one to put his own needs before that of the mission. Ever. His superiors realized this, and he was always considered to be at the top of the heap when evaluations of new SEALs were performed.** In SEAL garb sometime after 9/11Brown certainly had his share of obstacles to overcome. One of them was just plain bad luck. During a room clearing exercise when his Team was using simulation rounds tipped with red paint, one of the rounds impacted Adam’s face and caught him right in the corner of the eye just as he turned his head. It completely missed his safety glasses. Despite numerous surgeries, his mangled eye eventually had to be removed.** This might be tough for some of you to look at, but buck up, it wasn’t you that was shot in the eye. Look closely and you’ll see that on the prosthetic is the mascot of the Arkansas Razorbacks, Adam’s favorite football team. The man even handled the loss of an eye with a smile on his face.With this type of injury he could have chosen to ask for a medical discharge where he would have received money from the government for the rest of his life. Did he choose that road? Hell no, Adam Brown instead applied to SEAL sniper school. Keep in mind this was his dominant eye that he lost. He now had to retrain himself to shoot left handed using his off-eye. In a school where everyone else has two eyes and half of them still wash out, one-eyed Adam Brown not only passed, but ended up second in his class.Some of the instructors for the East coast based SEAL Teams were members of DEVGRU, better known as SEAL Team Six (or just STS). One of these elite Operators was to become Adam’s mentor. Always wanting to push himself further, Adam decided that he too wanted to be a DEVGRU Operator. Why? Because they are the best of the best and joining their ranks would be a huge challenge.Adam applied for, and was eventually was granted a training spot at Green Team (the DEVGRU selection process). There was one issue, at this point Brown was still undergoing procedures on his eye to try to regain some vision. Because of this, his superiors wanted him to wait a year before joining Green Team. In the meantime, Adam was deployed to Afghanistan.** Adam loved children and personally went out of his way to hand out shoes and socks to Afghan kids in need.While in Afghanistan, he was involved in a freak accident when two US military convoys, traveling in different directions at a high rate of speed on a narrow road, collided with one another. There was a ton of dust being kicked up in both directions. This disoriented one of the drivers who accidentally clipped the front end of the Humvee in which Adam was riding. Brown had his right hand on the window frame at the time, and as his vehicle rolled over three times it smashed his fingers, leaving them hanging on by only a few tendons. Ignoring his injuries, he helped tend to others injured more seriously than he was. His fingers now wrapped in a lump of bloody gauze, he insisted on pulling security until every other man was aboard the CASEVAC helicopter.He called Kelley and casually told her he had an accident and that he would be coming home a bit early. After a flight to Germany for emergency surgery, he was on his way back to Little Creek. When it came time for more surgery, Adam insisted on a local anesthetic so he could remain awake and watch the entire procedure.** During the healing processThis was in December of 2006 and Green Team was scheduled to begin in June. Now both his dominant eye and his dominant hand were messed up. A month after surgery, Adam began to retrain himself to fire both his carbine and his pistol with his left hand. Adam’s biggest concern at this point was how he would handle CQB (Close Quarters Battle) drills, where lightning fast reactions are needed to successfully clear rooms and react to threats.The Green Team instructors understandably had great skepticism as to whether a man with one eye and recently surgically reattached fingers (on his dominant hand no less) could pass a course where only the top 2% of SEALs were accepted and half of them failed. There was concern that Brown might pose a safety hazard because so much live ammunition was used in training, but after reviewing his exemplary record once more the leaders of DEVGRU decided to give him a chance.To compensate for his diminished peripheral vision due to his missing right eye, Adam had to “keep his head on a swivel” and be constantly moving it from side to side. Even though his right hand had been crushed and his fingers reattached only months earlier, Brown shot flawlessly.Adam Brown had accomplished what nearly everyone thought was impossible, he passed Green Team and became a DEVGRU Operator. He was shortly thereafter assigned to Gold Squadron (one of DEVGRU’s four assault squadrons), nicknamed the Knights.** Members of Gold Squadron displaying their unit flag. Note that their canine, front and center, made it to the top of the mountain as well.On February 5th, 2010 Chief Special Warfare Operator Adam Brown celebrated his 36th birthday at home with his wife and two elementary school aged kids (Nathan and Savannah) enjoying his favorite birthday cake flavor, cookies and cream. The children were excited to give their daddy his present, and Adam unwrapped it carefully. He smiled broadly when he opened the box to see an adult sized pair of Batman underwear. Their dad was their superhero, and this was their way of proving that to him. “I love them!”, he exclaimed. He took a knee and so he could get down to their level and he made a promise to his children. “I promise these are going to be my undercover underwear. I’m going to wear them on every op I go on”. He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper and continued, “Nobody will ever know of my superhero capabilities”. Overhearing this Kelley called him a dork and the kids cracked up laughing.February 26th was Adam’s day to report for his deployment to Afghanistan. Early that evening the family shared dinner at Chili’s. Immediately after dinner it was off to the base where they would say their goodbyes. Leaving your wife and children knowing there is a fair chance you will never see them again is an unspeakable mixture of sadness and pain. The kids tried to be brave, but inevitably the tears started streaming down their little faces. Adam turned to his 10-year-old son and told him, “This is the last time buddy, last time”. He picked up his daughter, gave her a big hug and told her, “Bye little baby, it’s all fine”. Putting Savannah down, he turned to Kelley, “You come home”, she said. “I promise”, Adam replied simply. They shared a final kiss and Kelley felt a strong compulsion to have the guard at the gate snap a quick family photo. It is shown below.** The final Brown family photoLate in the afternoon of March 17th, Chief Brown attended that evening’s mission briefing. It was a typical DEVGRU mission; a high-value target in an extremely dangerous remote environment. The goal of the mission was to kill or capture a high ranking Taliban leader code-named Objective Lake James. James and his men had been responsible for the deaths of several American soldiers who manned a nearby Forward Operating Base.While he was in the meeting, Kelley tried to contact Adam via Skype. “Hi, Sweetie”, she wrote. She waited for a while for a reply, but there was none. This was not uncommon as Adam and his Team remained quite busy. Kelley went about her business.When night fell, Adam and his fellow SEALs boarded MH-47 Chinook helicopters operated by the Army’s 160th SOAR for their commute to work. The mountains of the Hindu Kush can be quite treacherous, and it wasn't a surprise to the Operators when they heard the choppers would not be able to land. The SEALs would have to fast rope in and walk a few kilometers to their objective who intel told them was holed up in a small village.After reaching the village, everything went according to the book until a Taliban sentry must have heard a noise that caused him to raise his weapon and place his finger on the trigger. Feeling he was about to be fired upon, a SEAL only thirty feet away from the enemy soldier took him out with a suppressed weapon. Seeing the man next to him suddenly drop dead, another Taliban sentry began spraying bullets into the darkness. The fight was on.Before long, the SEALs found the building that recent intel told them housed Objective Lake James. There were shots coming from one of the windows of the structure, but no one could tell immediately exactly where they were coming from. Adam caught a glimpse of the shooter and relayed that info back to his Team. Wanting to eliminate the threat as soon as possible, a fellow SEAL asked over the radio, “Can anyone get a grenade in there?”. “I got it”, came the reply from Adam Brown. Adam could always be counted on to step up and take care of business. The window was beyond throwing distance, so Adam decided a 40 mm grenade launcher was in order. Positioning himself to get the grenade to it’s intended target meant he would have to leave his position of cover. Only 10 minutes had passed since the assault began. As he moved forward in an attempt to get a good angle, shots rang out from his left flank. Adam cried out in pain. He had been shot through both legs. Adam gestured to where he heard the shots come from and told his Teammates, “They’re over there”. He winced in pain pointing towards a barn. “In there”. Realizing they were spotted, the men in the barn rained down bullets in Adam’s direction. He was hit several times on his left side. Some of the rounds made their way between the plates of Adam’s body armor. Only then he conveyed to his Team the code-word signifying that an American was down. Two of Adam’s brothers rushed to his aid, one being shot through the wrist in the process. Once they made it to his position, they lifted their badly wounded Teammate, all 250 pounds of him including his gear and weapons, and dragged him to safety.A Corpsman was summoned, and he found Adam bleeding profusely. He had been shot multiple times under his left arm and through his abdomen. Surveying him for other possible wounds, the Corpsman cut off Adam’s pants. His Teammates stopped in their tracks for a second, there they were, the Batman underwear his kids had bought him for his birthday, in place just as promised. By this time, two fellow SEALs were keeping pressure on Adam’s wounds the best they could. “Hang in there buddy!”, they implored. “I’m okay, I’m okay”, Adam replied as he closed his eyes. Adam Brown had died.Chief Special Warfare Operator Adam Lee Brown was buried in Cunningham Cemetery in Garland County in his beloved Arkansas. Kelley and the children moved back to Hot Springs, and the kids were enrolled in Lake Hamilton Elementary School, walking the same hallways Adam did when he was a child, according to his final wishes.A few weeks after settling into their new home in Hot Springs, Kelley was up at night unable to sleep. She began looking through a box of old papers when she spotted something she had never seen before. It had been handwritten by Adam at least nine years earlier.He wrote:I’m lying here about to sleep, and all I can think about is how awesome my life is with you and Nathan, and I was thinking what if something happened to me this week and you never really knew how much I love you, and how I love being married to you, how much I love my life and how awesome it is to be NaNa’s father. You are the greatest, purest, sweetest, and most beautiful woman I have ever met, much less I get to be your husband…Nathan holds a place in my heart that is unexplainable, and that I did not know existed until he came into our lives…May he always know that the greatest man on Earth is Jesus Christ, may we always show him that. I am so blessed, it makes my blood burn with a completeness and happiness I have never had. You are so precious. Although I miss you so deeply, the Word says, ‘This is the day the Lord made; let us rejoice and be glad’…With Love Through Eternity,AdamPlease check out this amazing book: Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown: Eric Blehm: 9780307730701: Amazon.com: Books It goes into much greater detail chronicling the life of this American hero and contained the source material for much of this piece.If you would like to contribute to some of the causes that Adam strongly believed in, please visit this site run by his family: ADAM BROWN Legacy Fund. Love Through Eternity.

According to a friend of mine, by the way I love questions like this. Back to my friend. Now just make it perfectly clear, I am not a Qanon anything.First here’s a brief history of wire tapping I found on a search:How far back do we have to go to find the origins of wiretapping?It starts long before the telephone. The earliest statute prohibiting wiretapping was written in California in 1862, just after the Pacific Telegraph Company reached the West Coast, and the first person convicted was a stock broker named D.C. Williams in 1864. His scheme was ingenious: He listened in on corporate telegraph lines and sold the information he overheard to stock traders.Who’s been doing the eavesdropping?Until the 1920s, wiretapping was most often used by private detectives and corporations. It wasn’t until Prohibition that it became a common law enforcement tool, but even after a 1928 Supreme Court ruling narrowly affirmed the constitutionality of police wiretapping, its legality—and its morality—remained a point of fierce contention.Then, the 1930s brought revelations that wiretapping was a widespread and viciously effective tool for corporate management to root out union activity. The La Follette Civil Liberties Committee in the United States Senate, for instance, found all sorts of wiretap abuses on the part of corporations. Hiring private detectives to spy on labor unions was one of the classic dirty tricks of the period.Now back to today. To answer your question: “YES”! My friend told me there is a vast complex of computers out west that all land line calls go through, checking for key words that will flag concern. Cell phone signals can be grab out of the air and listened to. Media like Twitter, Facebook, Skype and other media platforms are monitored. That’s how the government tracked the insurrection.Not many people used land lines any more, but if the powers that be deem it necessary to monitor calls they will get a warrant.Here’s what happened under George W. Bush:The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the President of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the War on Terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND.[1]The last presidential authorization expired on February 1, 2007, but some of the collection activities were continued, first under the authority of the Protect America Act of 2007, passed in August of that year, and then under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which was enacted in July 2008.[2]One part of the program was the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which authorized warrantless wiretapping of international communications where one party to the communication was believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. The other activities have reportedly included data mining of e-mail messages[3] and telephone call detail records in the NSA call database.[4]In 2007 the Attorney General publicly acknowledged the existence of other intelligence activities covered under the same Presidential authorizations.[2] The full extent of the President's Surveillance Program was revealed in June 2013, when The Guardian published a highly classified report of the Inspector General of the NSA, describing how the program was established and evolved from September 2001 until January 2007.[5]The President's Surveillance Program activities were periodically reauthorized by the President, and were later transitioned to authority granted in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008. The act required the Inspectors General of all intelligence agencies involved in the program to "complete a comprehensive review" of the activities through January 17, 2007, and produce an unclassified report within one year after enactment. The report published on July 10, 2009 concluded that the President's program involved "unprecedented collection activities" that went far beyond the scope of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.[2] The report raised questions over the legal underpinnings of the authorizations, a lack of oversight, excessive secrecy, and the effectiveness of the program.[6][7] The report concluded that the program was built on a "factually flawed" legal analysis.[8]Public disclosure of the Terrorist Surveillance Program in 2005 ignited the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. The other classified aspects of the program had also raised serious concerns within the Department of Justice over the program's legal status and its potential effect on future criminal prosecutions. This caused conflicts with the White House that resulted in a dramatic confrontation in 2004 at the hospital bedside of the ailing Attorney General, and nearly led to mass resignations of top Justice officials in protest when they were overruled.[9] The report on the program was also released during a period of intense negotiations over proposed language in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. This would amend the National Security Act of 1947, increasing the requirements for briefing Congress on some classified intelligence programs like this one—President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill over that issue.[10]Here’s what being built in the desert:THE SPRING AIR in the small , sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah's Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It's the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as "the principle," marriage to multiple wives.Today Bluffdale is home to one of the nation's largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren, with upwards of 9,000 members. The brethren's complex includes a chapel, a school, a sports field, and an archive. Membership has doubled since 1978—and the number of plural marriages has tripled—so the sect has recently been looking for ways to purchase more land and expand throughout the town.But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who say little and keep to themselves. Like the pious polygamists, they are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers' own temple and archive, a massive 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.Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world's telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital "pocket litter." It is, in some measure, the realization of the "total information awareness" program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans' privacy.But "this is more than just a data center," says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: "Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency's very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it's all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.UTAH DATA CENTERWhen construction is completed in 2013, the heavily fortified $2 billion facility in Bluffdale will encompass 1 million square feet.1 Visitor control centerA $9.7 million facility for ensuring that only cleared personnel gain access.2 AdministrationDesignated space for technical support and administrative personnel.3 Data hallsFour 25,000-square-foot facilities house rows and rows of servers.4 Backup generators and fuel tanksDig Deeper with Our Longreads NewsletterSign up to get our best longform features, investigations, and thought-provoking essays, in your inbox every Sunday.Your emailSUBMITWill be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy.Can power the center for at least three days.5 Water storage and pumpingAble to pump 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day.6 Chiller plantAbout 60,000 tons of cooling equipment to keep servers from overheating.7 Power substationAn electrical substation to meet the center’s estimated 65-megawatt demand.8 SecurityVideo surveillance, intrusion detection, and other protection will cost more than $10 million.Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Conceptual Site planA swath of freezing fog blanketed Salt Lake City on the morning of January 6, 2011, mixing with a weeklong coating of heavy gray smog. Red air alerts, warning people to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary, had become almost daily occurrences, and the temperature was in the bone-chilling twenties. "What I smell and taste is like coal smoke," complained one local blogger that day. At the city's international airport, many inbound flights were delayed or diverted while outbound regional jets were grounded. But among those making it through the icy mist was a figure whose gray suit and tie made him almost disappear into the background. He was tall and thin, with the physique of an aging basketball player and dark caterpillar eyebrows beneath a shock of matching hair. Accompanied by a retinue of bodyguards, the man was NSA deputy director Chris Inglis, the agency's highest-ranking civilian and the person who ran its worldwide day-to-day operations.A short time later, Inglis arrived in Bluffdale at the site of the future data center, a flat, unpaved runway on a little-used part of Camp Williams, a National Guard training site. There, in a white tent set up for the occasion, Inglis joined Harvey Davis, the agency's associate director for installations and logistics, and Utah senator Orrin Hatch, along with a few generals and politicians in a surreal ceremony. Standing in an odd wooden sandbox and holding gold-painted shovels, they made awkward jabs at the sand and thus officially broke ground on what the local media had simply dubbed "the spy center." Hoping for some details on what was about to be built, reporters turned to one of the invited guests, Lane Beattie of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. Did he have any idea of the purpose behind the new facility in his backyard? "Absolutely not," he said with a self-conscious half laugh. "Nor do I want them spying on me."For his part, Inglis simply engaged in a bit of double-talk, emphasizing the least threatening aspect of the center: "It's a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the intelligence community in its mission to, in turn, enable and protect the nation's cybersecurity." While cybersecurity will certainly be among the areas focused on in Bluffdale, what is collected, how it's collected, and what is done with the material are far more important issues. Battling hackers makes for a nice cover—it's easy to explain, and who could be against it? Then the reporters turned to Hatch, who proudly described the center as "a great tribute to Utah," then added, "I can't tell you a lot about what they're going to be doing, because it's highly classified."And then there was this anomaly: Although this was supposedly the official ground-breaking for the nation's largest and most expensive cybersecurity project, no one from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for protecting civilian networks from cyberattack, spoke from the lectern. In fact, the official who'd originally introduced the data center, at a press conference in Salt Lake City in October 2009, had nothing to do with cybersecurity. It was Glenn A. Gaffney, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, a man who had spent almost his entire career at the CIA. As head of collection for the intelligence community, he managed the country's human and electronic spies.Within days, the tent and sandbox and gold shovels would be gone and Inglis and the generals would be replaced by some 10,000 construction workers. "We've been asked not to talk about the project," Rob Moore, president of Big-D Construction, one of the three major contractors working on the project, told a local reporter. The plans for the center show an extensive security system: an elaborate $10 million antiterrorism protection program, including a fence designed to stop a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling 50 miles per hour, closed-circuit cameras, a biometric identification system, a vehicle inspection facility, and a visitor-control center.Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.A short time later, Inglis arrived in Bluffdale at the site of the future data center, a flat, unpaved runway on a little-used part of Camp Williams, a National Guard training site. There, in a white tent set up for the occasion, Inglis joined Harvey Davis, the agency's associate director for installations and logistics, and Utah senator Orrin Hatch, along with a few generals and politicians in a surreal ceremony. Standing in an odd wooden sandbox and holding gold-painted shovels, they made awkward jabs at the sand and thus officially broke ground on what the local media had simply dubbed "the spy center." Hoping for some details on what was about to be built, reporters turned to one of the invited guests, Lane Beattie of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. Did he have any idea of the purpose behind the new facility in his backyard? "Absolutely not," he said with a self-conscious half laugh. "Nor do I want them spying on me."For his part, Inglis simply engaged in a bit of double-talk, emphasizing the least threatening aspect of the center: "It's a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the intelligence community in its mission to, in turn, enable and protect the nation's cybersecurity." While cybersecurity will certainly be among the areas focused on in Bluffdale, what is collected, how it's collected, and what is done with the material are far more important issues. Battling hackers makes for a nice cover—it's easy to explain, and who could be against it? Then the reporters turned to Hatch, who proudly described the center as "a great tribute to Utah," then added, "I can't tell you a lot about what they're going to be doing, because it's highly classified."And then there was this anomaly: Although this was supposedly the official ground-breaking for the nation's largest and most expensive cybersecurity project, no one from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for protecting civilian networks from cyberattack, spoke from the lectern. In fact, the official who'd originally introduced the data center, at a press conference in Salt Lake City in October 2009, had nothing to do with cybersecurity. It was Glenn A. Gaffney, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, a man who had spent almost his entire career at the CIA. As head of collection for the intelligence community, he managed the country's human and electronic spies.Within days, the tent and sandbox and gold shovels would be gone and Inglis and the generals would be replaced by some 10,000 construction workers. "We've been asked not to talk about the project," Rob Moore, president of Big-D Construction, one of the three major contractors working on the project, told a local reporter. The plans for the center show an extensive security system: an elaborate $10 million antiterrorism protection program, including a fence designed to stop a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling 50 miles per hour, closed-circuit cameras, a biometric identification system, a vehicle inspection facility, and a visitor-control center.Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.Before yottabytes of data from the deep web and elsewhere can begin piling up inside the servers of the NSA's new center, they must be collected. To better accomplish that, the agency has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program's exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn't revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail. William Binney was a senior NSA crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network. A tall man with strands of black hair across the front of his scalp and dark, determined eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, the 68-year-old spent nearly four decades breaking codes and finding new ways to channel billions of private phone calls and email messages from around the world into the NSA's bulging databases. As chief and one of the two cofounders of the agency's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, Binney and his team designed much of the infrastructure that's still likely used to intercept international and foreign communications.He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation's cable landing stations—the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. "I think there's 10 to 20 of them," Binney says. "That's not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast."The eavesdropping on Americans doesn't stop at the telecom switches. To capture satellite communications in and out of the US, the agency also monitors AT&T's powerful earth stations, satellite receivers in locations that include Roaring Creek and Salt Creek. Tucked away on a back road in rural Catawissa, Pennsylvania, Roaring Creek's three 105-foot dishes handle much of the country's communications to and from Europe and the Middle East. And on an isolated stretch of land in remote Arbuckle, California, three similar dishes at the company's Salt Creek station service the Pacific Rim and Asia.The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close together: "We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state."Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. "They violated the Constitution setting it up," he says bluntly. "But they didn't care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn't stay." Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency's worldwide intercepts. The haul only grew from there. According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct "deep packet inspection," examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.The software, created by a company called Narus that's now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA's recorders. "Anybody you want, route to a recorder," Binney says. "If your number's in there? Routed and gets recorded." He adds, "The Narus device allows you to take it all." And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T's vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.TRENDING NOWVerizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency's domestic eavesdropping. "That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five," he says. "So you're over a billion and a half calls a day." (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people's communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you're just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. "The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?" he says. "The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don't want." Instead, he adds, "they're storing everything they gather." And the agency is gathering as much as it can.Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. "You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining," Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, "financial transactions or travel or anything," he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone's life.The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks "basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans." Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. "A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families," she says, "incredibly intimate, personal conversations." Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. "It's almost like going through and finding somebody's diary," she says.In secret listening rooms nationwide, NSA software examines every email, phone call, and tweet as they zip by.But there is, of course, reason for anyone to be distressed about the practice. Once the door is open for the government to spy on US citizens, there are often great temptations to abuse that power for political purposes, as when Richard Nixon eavesdropped on his political enemies during Watergate and ordered the NSA to spy on antiwar protesters. Those and other abuses prompted Congress to enact prohibitions in the mid-1970s against domestic spying.The software, created by a company called Narus that's now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA's recorders. "Anybody you want, route to a recorder," Binney says. "If your number's in there? Routed and gets recorded." He adds, "The Narus device allows you to take it all." And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T's vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency's domestic eavesdropping. "That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five," he says. "So you're over a billion and a half calls a day." (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people's communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you're just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. "The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?" he says. "The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don't want." Instead, he adds, "they're storing everything they gather." And the agency is gathering as much as it can.Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. "You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining," Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, "financial transactions or travel or anything," he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone's life.The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks "basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans." Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. "A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families," she says, "incredibly intimate, personal conversations." Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. "It's almost like going through and finding somebody's diary," she says.In secret listening rooms nationwide, NSA software examines every email, phone call, and tweet as they zip by.But there is, of course, reason for anyone to be distressed about the practice. Once the door is open for the government to spy on US citizens, there are often great temptations to abuse that power for political purposes, as when Richard Nixon eavesdropped on his political enemies during Watergate and ordered the NSA to spy on antiwar protesters. Those and other abuses prompted Congress to enact prohibitions in the mid-1970s against domestic spying.This article goes for ever, and I may have copied and pasted some of this out of order but I think you can get the picture.The answer is definitely “YES”!

When it comes to filling your vacation itinerary, Orlando offers no shortage of things to do. For starters, we’re not known as the Theme Park Capital of the World for nothing, being home to eight wildly popular theme parks, including those at Walt Disney World Resort, Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld Orlando and LEGOLAND Florida Resort. But did you know that we also have a vast array of recreational activities and indoor attractions beyond the theme parks?To guide you, we’ve compiled a list of Orlando’s top outdoor and indoor attractions, as well as dining experiences that qualify as attractions in their own right. Because we know you’re going to want to spend time at our theme parks … but we wouldn’t want you to think they’re the only reason to visit Orlando!Outdoor Attractions and Activities in OrlandoThe opportunities for outdoor fun in and around Orlando are endless, including ziplining, airboat rides, animal encounters and much more. For additional information on these and other outdoor experiences, visit our Attractions, Golf, Orlando Outdoors & EcoTourism, and Sports, Recreation & Outdoors pages.Boggy Creek Airboat RidesLocated in Kissimmee near Walt Disney World, this attraction invites you to glide across the headwaters of the Florida Everglades at speeds up to 40 mph aboard six-passenger airboats that have been inspected and approved by the U.S. Coast Guard. During the 45-minute tour, you’ll encounter areas untouched by man and see a wide range of exotic wildlife. Night expeditions, which last an hour, are also available.Bok Tower GardensJust 10 miles from LEGOLAND Florida, this is one of Florida’s first attractions and best-kept secrets. The National Historic Landmark was dedicated in 1929 as a gift of gratitude from Edward Bok, a humanitarian, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and world peace advocate. Bok Tower Gardens’ nearly 700 acres of citrus groves, woodland gardens, nature trails, conservation lands and endangered plants are the perfect setting for visitors to explore breathtaking sights throughout the year.Central Florida Zoo & Botanical GardensNestled in lush, tropical foliage, the Central Florida Zoo is home to 23 acres of native gardens and more than 500 animals. It also features an insect zoo, a reptile house, a children’s area with animals you can feed and pet, a splash playground, and Seminole Aerial Adventures. The zoo is located in Sanford, about 20 minutes from downtown Orlando.Fun Spot America Theme ParksFun Spot America is Central Florida’s only family-owned theme park, and it has two locations: International Drive in Orlando and Kissimmee near Walt Disney World. Both provide the same level of fun, but they are distinct enough to allow for completely different experiences. Whether you’re a thrill-seeker or someone who prefers the lights and sounds of an arcade, these parks offer plenty of excitement for the entire family, including multi-level go-kart tracks and Orlando’s only wooden roller coaster.Giraffe RanchHave you ever fed a giraffe? At this attraction in Dade City, about an hour from Walt Disney World, you’ll get to know giraffes and other species from around the world, all in a setting that seems right out of Africa with huge live oaks and open grasslands. Offering tours exclusively by reservation, it’s on 47 acres of countryside adjoining Florida’s second largest wilderness area, the Green Swamp, complete with native orchids, lush pastures and rolling wetlands.GatorlandSituated on more than 100 acres, one of Orlando’s oldest attractions provides affordably priced family fun. See thousands of alligators and crocodiles, along with an aviary, a breeding marsh with observation tower, Florida panthers, a petting zoo, and a splash pad for younger visitors. The park also offers one-of-a-kind reptilian exhibitions, including the Gator Wrestlin’ Show, Gator Jumparoo and special up-close encounters. Last but not least, get even more thrills from your visit with the separate-ticketed Screamin’ Gator Zip Line and Stompin’ Gator Off-Road Adventure.Orlando Tree Trek Adventure ParkPractice your best Tarzan yell before heading to this attraction, which is located near Walt Disney World in Kissimmee. It features 97 challenges for climbers of every skill level, including swings, nets, ropes, a trapeze and other ways to show off. Safety is never an issue, either, as you’ll be securely clipped to a safety cable, and all guests receive a safety demonstration from trained instructors.Orlando Watersports ComplexClose to Orlando International Airport, this unique water park offers waterskiing, wakeboarding, wakeskating, wakesurfing and kneeboarding on a massive boat lake. It’s also home to Central Florida’s first Aquapark, where you can have hours of fun on a series of inflatable, interlocking climbing obstacles, pathways and slides. However, guests under 18 require parental waivers, and there’s a mandatory one-hour lesson for children under 10.Pirate’s Cove Adventure GolfGet ready to enjoy swashbuckling fun for the whole family on International Drive! This imaginative miniature golf experience offers two championship, 18-hole courses, where you putt your way through mountain caves, over footbridges and under waterfalls. The attraction also has a beautiful picnic area for birthday parties and group events.Revolution Off RoadAn off-road motor and fishing venue set in 230 acres of Florida countryside, this attraction is close to all major tourist attractions. You’re invited to jump in the driver’s seat for the guided adventure of a lifetime on all-terrain vehicles, dune buggies or even ARGO amphibious Mucky Ducks. Revolution also offers bass fishing on its private lake, as well as archery lessons and clay shooting. Plus, all equipment is included.Safari Wilderness RanchYou’ll be enveloped by an open vista of grazing animals surrounded by cypress domes and bay trees at this attraction, located 45 minutes from Walt Disney World. During this natural adventure, knowledgeable and experienced guides will take you through large herds of exotic game on 260 acres of pristine wilderness. Tours are offered daily and by reservation only.Wild Florida Airboats and Gator ParkTravel deep into 4,200 acres of protected swamps, marshes and rivers that make up the headwaters of the Florida Everglades. On your journey, you’ll get an in-depth look at the gators, birds, eagles, trees and plants that can be found in the area’s beautiful wetlands. What’s more, airboat tickets include complimentary admission to the wildlife park and a hands-on gator demonstration.Indoor Attractions in OrlandoLooking for an indoor activity during your stay in Orlando? No problem! We have indoor attractions for all ages and interests — from making your own Crayola crayon or indoor skydiving, to experiencing an upside-down “amusement park for the mind” or putting pedal to the metal on high-speed go-karts. Visit our Attractions page for even more ideas on ways to have indoor fun in Orlando.America’s Escape GameIf riddles and puzzles are your thing, you won’t want to miss this game, which is located on International Drive. You and a team of up to nine other people will be locked in a room, after which you’ll have 60 minutes to solve riddles and puzzles to escape. You can also choose from six different experiences, each providing a unique challenge to solve.Andretti Indoor Karting & GamesRace with a legend at the only indoor karting experience endorsed by Mario Andretti! Adjacent to International Drive and the Orange County Convention Center, this 150,000-square-foot facility features multi-level indoor karting, 12 lanes of boutique bowling, more than 120 arcade and prize games, two-story laser tag, six virtual-reality racing simulators, a motion theater, and an extreme ropes course with a curved-rail zipline, as well as a full-service restaurant and bars.Breakout Escape RoomsGrab your family, friends, coworkers or even strangers to experience these one-of-a-kind escape games close to International Drive. Themes here include The Ringmaster’s Den, Game of Espionage and Zombie Roadhouse. Giving you 60 minutes to escape, the non-linear rooms will have you puzzled and using your brain to find hidden secrets, decipher clues and locate keys that will lead you to freedom.Chocolate Kingdom: Interactive Factory Adventure TourThis interactive journey near International Drive reveals how chocolate transforms from the bean into a creamy, dreamy treat. Guided by a prince and his dragon sidekick, you’ll go through the attraction’s Cacao Tree Greenhouse, Chocolate Museum, Mystical River of Chocolate and Bean-to-the-Bar Factory, which uses old-world machinery. You’ll even have the chance to create a customized chocolate bar!Crayola ExperienceEnjoy a full day of creative play and colorful fun with 26 hands-on activities at this family-friendly attraction, located at The Florida Mall. Covering two stories and 70,000 square feet, Crayola Experience invites you to name and wrap your own Crayola crayon, and learn how crayons are made in a fun live show. You can also sculpt colorful creations at the Crayola Model Magic compound, watch as your digital art comes to live on a huge interactive wall, and melt crayons down into shapes.Drive Shack OrlandoJust 15 minutes from Orlando International Airport, Drive Shack invites golfers of every age and skill level — as well as people who have never picked up a club — to experience an all-new take on golf. Instead of worrying about pars, birdies or holes-in-one, you’ll play fun games like ShackJack, which is based on classic blackjack, or Monster Hunt, where you destroy monsters to save a princess. And it’s all complemented with gourmet food and beverage options.The Escape Game OrlandoLocated in the heart of I-Drive, and rated as Orlando’s No. 1 escape room by TripAdvisor, The Escape Game offers immersive, 60-minute adventures that bring epic stories to life in a one-of-a-kind tactile experience. You and your team will work together to find clues, overcome challenges and ultimately complete a mission. Escaping will require teamwork, communication, wits, a sense of adventure, and more importantly: you!The Great Escape RoomThe only attraction of its kind in downtown Orlando, The Great Escape Room features three challenging scenarios, including The President’s Bunker, Professor Moriarty’s Gameroom and Dr. Watson’s Infirmary. Your group will have to work together as a team to solve various mysteries and escape, and you’ll only have 60 minutes to do it!Hukoo’s Family Fun CenterLocated across the street from The Florida Mall, this 25,000-square-foot entertainment center provides hours of family fun. You can enjoy arcade games, laser tag, bumper cars, climbing walls and more. They also have a mini-bowling alley, a laser maze, and a café with pizza, subs, burgers and more. Plus, admission and parking are always free.I-Drive NASCARRain or shine, racing excitement is always guaranteed at this indoor attraction on International Drive. In addition to state-of-the-art electric race karts, I-Drive NASCAR has an arcade with more than 60 games, a four-lane bowling alley, three pool tables, and a full bar and restaurant offering 180-degree views of the action.iFLY Orlando Indoor SkydivingIf you’ve always wanted to experience skydiving but aren’t too keen on the whole “jumping out of a plane” aspect, head to this attraction on International Drive. There’s no parachute and no jumping. Instead, you’ll float on a cushion of air thanks to iFLY’s innovative wind-tunnel technology. It’s safe for guests as young as 3, and you’ll be guided by a personal flight instructor.Kennedy Space Center Visitor ComplexHead to Florida’s east coast, about an hour from downtown Orlando, to explore the past, present and future of space travel without ever leaving earth. Admission nets you the chance to see Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Saturn V moon rocket, plus a wealth of other artifacts, replicas and displays, but the fun doesn’t stop there. You can also experience Heroes & Legend, an immersive experience where the stories of NASA’s pioneering astronauts come to life, plus other features.Kings Dining & EntertainmentThis is the perfect place to bowl, eat and lounge in a comfortable, fun and luxurious environment. Located at Pointe Orlando on International Drive, it features 22 bowling lanes, billiards, ping pong and even bocce ball, plus two premium bars serving innovative cocktails. It also boasts a chef-designed menu centered around fresh takes on American classics.Lockbusters Escape GamePart of International Drive’s stellar lineup of attractions, Lockbusters does away with traditional locks and keys for an innovative take on the traditional escape-room genre. Challenges include The Collector, Bank Heist, Pirate Adventure, Chopper Down and Cremlocke Manor, all of which provide fully immersive experiences.Machine Gun AmericaFeel the power of automatic armaments and other exotic guns at this unique attraction in Kissimmee. Choose from a full range of guns, ranging from World War II to the modern era, in a state-of-the-art facility with ample safety measures and trained, specialized staff to keep you secure.Madame Tussauds OrlandoOrlando’s chapter of this world-renowned attraction is part of ICON Park on International Drive. Here, you can see lifelike stars from film and television, music, sports, pop culture and history. And now, you can even meet some of the world’s best-known superheroes as part of Justice League: A Call for Heroes, an all-new exhibit featuring the stars of DC Entertainment’s Justice League!Main Event OrlandoEat, bowl and play with state-of-the-art bowling, virtual and interactive games, billiards, a high-ropes adventure course, 61 HDTVs, and chef-driven dining, all in a 50,000-square-foot facility. Main Event also boasts the first-ever, free-roam, multiplayer, virtual-reality game! It’s part of the Pointe Orlando dining, entertainment and shopping hub on International Drive.Ripley’s Believe It or Not!Don’t be fooled by this International Drive attraction’s outward appearance: It’s not really falling into a sinkhole! It’s just one of many odd and unbelievable sights, sounds and experiences at the 10,000-square-foot venue. Inside, the whole family can enjoy fascinating, interactive exhibits and explore an impressive variety of artifacts and displays in 16 unique galleries. And the self-guided, self-paced tour means you’ll have plenty of time to see it all.SEA LIFE Orlando AquariumDive deep into an underwater world of wonder at SEA LIFE Orlando Aquarium, part of ICON Park. Soak up incredible views from Orlando’s only 360-degree underwater tunnel, where sharks and rays swim overhead, and gaze at breathtaking creatures as you walk through themed habitats. It also features a special play area for younger guests.Topgolf OrlandoLove golf? Never played it? Either way, you’ll have a blast at Topgolf, which is adjacent to the Orange County Convention Center in the International Drive area. Featuring a fun take on the game that uses a scoring system similar to bowling or darts, the venue also has an impressive food and drink menu. What’s more, all of the attraction’s 102 climate-controlled driving bays have HDTVs and music selection.The Wheel at ICON ParkTechnically speaking, this attraction — formerly known as the Orlando Eye — is outdoors, but you’ll experience it in climate-controlled comfort aboard one of the roomy, WiFi-enabled capsules. Towering over International Drive, the 400-foot-tall observation wheel will give you an unbeatable view of Orlando. It’s one of several attractions at the ICON Park entertainment and dining complex.WonderWorksThe original “indoor amusement park for the mind” melds education and entertainment into more than 100 hands-on exhibits for all ages. Features include six interactive “Wonder Zones” based on a range of themes, as well as laser tag, a three-story ropes challenge course and the XD Theater 4D Motion Ride. Also home to The Outta Control Magic Comedy Dinner Show, you’ll find it in the famous upside down building that’s part of Pointe Orlando on International Drive.Unique Dining Entertainment in OrlandoWith more than 5,000 restaurants to choose from, Orlando offers a complete range of culinary options, stretching from gourmet food trucks to the very best in fine dining. What’s more, we’re home to several unique restaurants where you can combine high-quality fare with unforgettable entertainment, including these standouts!Capone’s Dinner & ShowKnock three times, give the secret password and discover the era of mobsters, dames and prohibition at this dinner attraction near Walt Disney World in Kissimmee. The one-of-a-kind speakeasy and cabaret features singing, dancing, sensational costumes, standup comedy, romance and goofy gangster action, plus lots of audience participation.Mango’s Tropical CaféLocated in the heart of International Drive, Mango’s offers a lavish dining experience like no other. Watch in wonder as the world-famous Mango’s Dancers perform on an Italian glass mosaic after walking past an amazing terrazzo mural. Outdoor covered patio spaces include a sidewalk café and a second-floor veranda, which are surrounded by the copper sculpture Mambo Bar, the mystical Samba Bar and the lovely Mermaid Bar.Medieval Times Dinner & TournamentOrlando’s original dining entertainment experience presents a heart-pounding show that tells a tale of devotion, courage and love. Travel through the mist of time to an age where bold knights on spirited horses display the incredible athleticism and thrilling sword fights that have made Medieval Times one of America’s most popular dinner attractions. Housed in an actual castle, they’re located close to Walt Disney World in Kissimmee.The Outta Control Magic Comedy Dinner ShowThis hilarious show at WonderWorks in the Pointe Orlando complex combines high-energy comedy improvisation with spectacular magic to thoroughly entertain audiences of all ages. During the show, you will enjoy unlimited pizza, salad, dessert, beer, wine and soda. Reservations are required.The ROCK Dinner Show at Orlando ForumPresenting a high-energy musical journey of the most iconic rock and pop artists of all time, The ROCK Dinner Show can be enjoyed at the Orlando Forum on International Drive. Feel like rock royalty as you savor a three-course, from-scratch meal while an all-star cast of legendary performers amaze your senses with energizing music, sensational dancing and electrifying visual effects.Sleuths Mystery Dinner ShowsYou are invited to step into a world of comedy, mystery and intrigue at Sleuths, located on International Drive and suitable for all ages. Mingle with unusual characters as you become the detective and solve the crime through a live interrogation where the action is fast and the laughter is contagious. Dinner includes hors d’oeuvres, a choice of entrée and dessert, as well as unlimited beer, wine and soft drinks.