“Person of Interest” — the CBS cop drama about a government super computer that can predict the victims and perpetrators of crime — may not be so far fetched, after all.
“The government has been trying to build exactly the kind of machine that we feature on the show for about a decade now,” producer Jonathan Nolan says.
And now, it appears to have succeeded.
The National Security Agency is in the process of constructing a $2 billion data processing and spy center in remote Bluffdale, Utah, according to a recent report.
When completed next year, the one-million-square-foot facility will be used to intercept, store and analyze everything from private e-mails and cellphone calls to Web searches and parking tickets.
The no-longer secret project — first exposed by the tech magazine Wired in March — is an apparent realization of the “Total Information Awareness” project proposed by the Bush White House in the months following 9/11.
TIA was nixed by Congress in 2003 amid fears of invading the privacy of ordinary Americans.
“Person of Interest” — which producers like to call “science fact” — is based on the idea that a version of the cyber-surveillance system was actually built and is now being used secretly by its designer to prevent violent crimes on the streets of New York.
The show, the top-rated new drama of last season, was a near-instant hit when it debuted last fall.
On the show, the reclusive billionaire computer whiz Harold Finch (played by “Lost” star Michael Emerson) built the Big Brother system for the federal government, but he quits when he discovers it will be used for illegal surveillance.
Back out on the streets, Finch hacks into “the machine,” as he calls and uses the info to anticipate smaller, local crimes.
In each episode, the machine spits out a social security number which belongs to someone who will be either a victim or perpetrator.
Finch then enlists former CIA agent John Reese (Jim Caviezel) to prevent it from happening.
In real life, many in government were unhappy when the plug was pulled on TIA program — intended to predict when and where the next terrorist attack may come.
Still, Congress left funding in place for “processing, analysis and collaboration tools for counter-terrorism foreign intelligence” — which is how NSA is now justifying its new undertaking.
“I think that [TIA] is still a well worthy program to pursue,” former Pentagon spokesperson Don Sewell told The Post. “But the right measure of protecting privacy needs to be incorporated into the program.”
Producers of the TV show apparently are reluctant to talk about the connection between the real-life efforts of the government to collect data and the TV show. Last week, they declined to speak with The Post.
But cyber spying has even the actors on the show looking over their shoulders.
Last fall, Caviezel warned that the infrastructure is “very much in place” for spy tactics, like those used on the show.
“Everyone has a device in their pocket which the police now use more than anything else to determine what happened when something goes wrong,” he said. “It’s your phone.
“It’s a live microphone for the government should they choose to turn it on. It’s a location tracker. All this information is out there.
“We’re at this very odd moment kind of standing on the precipice of seeing what happens when you start harnessing all that information, which is why to me [‘Person of Interest’] is not really a science-fiction show.”