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NSA Is Building a New Datacenter In San Antonio
An anonymous reader writes in with an article from a Texas paper on the NSA's new facility in San Antonio. "America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters... where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency's mission to identify terrorist threats. ... [Author James] Bamford writes about how NSA and Microsoft had both been eyeing San Antonio for years because it has the cheapest electricity in Texas, and the state has its own power grid, making it less vulnerable to power outages on the national grid. He notes that it seemed the NSA wanted assurance Microsoft would be here, too, before making a final commitment, due to the advantages of 'having their miners virtually next door to the mother lode of data centers.' The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size. Bamford says that under current law, NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable." The article mentions the NRC report concluding that data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism, which we discussed a couple of months back.
The article mentions the NRC report concluding that data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism
Anyone wanna bet that Obama won't do a damn thing about these obvious attempts to spy on American citizens?
If any business needs yet another reason to stay away from SaaS, this is the one to pay attention to.
Businesses and their IP are becoming increasingly important. Any time your business IP crosses onto someone elses network, it's susceptible to snooping either by corporate espionage or now government eyes.
If your company has a market advantage caused by proprietary information, SaaS is not for you. Why else would the NSA be shacking up next to a Microsoft data center?
The US will never do anything to dislodge Microsoft from the throne. The intelligence value of having Microsoft products in a monopolistic position all over the world is far too important. You don't squander that just to please some customer rights hippies at home.
I would have thought being near a Google data center would be more valuable, with the huge amount of traffic, and the indexing that comes through Google.
Maybe Google has better practices in terms of security of their data centers?
The once Senator & future President has expressed a desire to shut down some of the most egregious abuses of power that Mr. Bush came up with.
I am highly skeptical that he'll do anything of the kind. I hope I'm wrong.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Microsoft's data under today's laws "without a warrant" is simply false... unless Microsoft voluntarily cooperates. And the article did make it sound like they were voluntarily cooperating...
which all adds up to yet another reason to boycott Microsoft and use Linux or OS X, and Open Source business software.
People are used to organized crime, but terrorism is a relatively new concept in America; people are more afraid of Al Qaeda than they are of the Hell's Angels, so fighting terrorism takes priority. I'm not saying it's the right way to look at things, but that's the way most Americans do.
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
This is called "democracy":
If you think the government is doing the wrong thing, then it is your duty as a citizen to stand up in public and explain why. If you make a persuasive argument, then other people will support your cause, and eventually you will have sufficient backing that the government will take note of your movement and adjust its actions to suit the new desires of the American people. Look at the history of the civil rights movement for examples of this working in practice -- and note that Martin Luther King did not become a household name by posting anonymously on Slashdot.
America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters
Sorry in advance, but I went ahead and read (some of) the article. Anyway, I'm having trouble believing for sure that this facility is a datacenter. Considering it's located at the site of a previous chip fab, it makes sense to me that it would stay a chip fab.
The only source that says this will be used for datamining isn't even the article author, but rather the author of a book who hasn't worked for the NSA for 25 years. These are quotes from this book:
No longer able to store all the intercepted phone calls and e-mail in its secret city, the agency has now built a new data warehouse in San Antonio, Texas," writes author James Bamford in the Shadow Factory, his third book about the NSA. "Costing, with renovations, upwards of $130 million, the 470,000-square-foot facility will be almost the size of the Alamodome. Considering how much data can now be squeezed onto a small flash drive, the new NSA building may eventually be able to hold all the information in the world."
So just what will be going on inside the NSA's new San Antonio facility? Bamford describes former NSA Director Mike Hayden's goals for the data-mining center as knowing "exactly what Americans were doing day by day, hour by hour, and second by second. He wanted to know where they shopped, what they bought, what movies they saw, what books they read, the toll booths they went through, the plane tickets they purchased, the hotels they stayed in... In other words, Total Information Awareness, the same Orwellian concept ...
The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size. Bamford says that under current law, NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable.
What the Microsoft people will have will be just storage of a lot of the email that is being sent. They keep this email -- I don't know why -- and there should be some legislation saying how long it should be kept," said Bamford in a phone interview last week. "The post office doesn't keep copies of our letters when we mail letters; why should the telecom companies or the internet providers keep copies of our email? It doesn't make sense to me.
That's a big wall of quotes. The author of the book knew what he was talking about when he wrote his first book back in 1982, which was the first book revealing the existence of the NSA. Over the years he's written a lot of articles and books about the necessity of oversight, which is very, very good, but based on some excerpts of his book, I'm not convinced that he exactly understands the some of the issues he talks about nowadays, and I'm not convinced that this is a datacenter or a datacenter for datamining.
Note that my post is not talking about whether the NSA is actually data-mining or not, or whether it's warranted or not... it's just a post about the supposed purpose of this particular Texas facility.
The problem is that according to testimony by engineers at the co-operating telecom facilities, the surveillance technology intercepts all traffic, not just requested traffic. So the NSA is intercepting domestic communications between citizens of no interest, without a warrant. That is in direct violation of the law. Develop a system that intercepts only the communications of interest, obtain a warrant for those streams that need it, and all will be will. Continue the dragnet approach and people will continue, rightfully, to protest the crime.
You mean a decades-old pearl of wisdom attributed to MINIX creator Andy Tanenbaum?