If he were to move into the White House come January 2017, Rand Paul would shut down the NSA data center that handles the controversial bulk collection of metadata, the Republican presidential hopeful promised on Saturday.

As Paul paid a visit to the outskirts of the Utah facility, the libertarian Kentucky senator said he would convert the center into the "Constitution Center to Study The Fourth Amendment," the provision that protects citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures."

"I'm on my way to the airport (in Salt Lake City), but we decided to stop by the NSA facility in Utah," Paul recounted on social media, according to Real Clear Politics. "Bulk data collection must end!"

The presidential candidate's remarks found widespread resonance online, where commentators quipped the facility should be used as "a prison for the law breaking politicians" or be converted into "smoldering hole in the ground."

Paul has made his opposition to the data program a key talking point of his campaign and last year went so far as to sue the Obama administration over the bulk collection of Americans' phone records.

"I say that your phone records are yours," he told a crowd at the the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this year, The Hill reported. "I say that the phone records of law-abiding citizens are none of their damn business."

The Utah NSA facility, which is officially known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, is believed to have the ability to store several exabytes of information. The compound located near Bluffdale was completed in May 2014 at a cost of $1.5 billion.

Despite Paul's ferocious opposition to the program, most Americans actually support the government's bulk collection of telephone metadata, CNN noted in June based on a poll it conducted with the Opinion Research Corporation.

Sixty-one percent of those surveyed then supported the extension of expired provisions of the Patriot Act, which ostensibly allow the National Security Administration to collect that information; 36 percent were opposed to the renewal.