Slashdot Mirror
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?
America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters - oddly positioned directly across the street from a 24-hour Walmart - where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency's mission to identify terrorist threats.
Keep your friends close, and your Walmarts closer.
See it there, a white plume over the battle - A diamond in the ash of the ultimate combustion - My panache. --Cyrano
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?
MSIE getting a button on the toolbar that says "Report as Terrorist site"
And MSN Hotmail getting a new link next to contacts that says "report contact as terrorist.
Also, the list of possible threat sources was just expanded to include slashdot.
Rumor has it that certain editors of slashdot and other blogs may be conducting attacks against various industry players by linking to them ( something the terrorists call "Slashdotting" the victim site)
i see this is the new "MSA" they've been talking about
Not the CIC?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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. But the difference between Camp X-ray, warrantless wiretaps of phone calls, and monitoring of online traffic is a sliding scale of outrage - many more people care about Gitmo than about the wiretaps, and many more people care about the wiretaps than online monitoring. Like everything else in life, it's about ordering your priorities.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Sony wasn't there that long. They got it from AMD. Anway, the NSA has been "moving in" for more than a year. It was almost a fort before, and it certainly is now. They even taken over the public road that ran to its north. I'm on the hill, about a mile northwest of there, and can see and hear it at night. It's also close to the Southwest Research Institute (they did the Columbia wing test that demonstrated the hole could be caused by the foam insulation), which is on the other side of Loop 410. I'm sort of surprised they moved in there, though. Lots of better places farther out. San Antonio used to have five military bases: Fort Sam Houston, Lackland AFB, Kelly AFB, and the smaller Brooks field, and Randolf AFB (nearby). Kelly and Brooks are gone. AT&T used to be headquartered here but most of it moved to Dallas earlier this year (think of room 614a). Mm, maybe that's why AT&T left - NSA was moving in.
I'm quite the fan of Linux myself and have been using it for years, but I fail to see how it's going to stop the NSA from spying on internet traffic...
You can't take the sky from me.
MS and NSA partnering over domestic spying WOPR?
If that doesn't make the hair on the back of your head stand up like a soldier on Viagra, nothing will.
Plus, most such efforts so far are nothing but money pits.
Table-ized A.I.
Movie rights.
There's got to be a series in that too.
There's too much officialdom going on and it warrants an expose of some sort.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
The Center should open about the time Bush moves back to Texas, so the Law of Conservation of Intelligence will hold.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I'm sure there's a distro for that.
rewriting history since 2109
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.
Yes, but it's produced by the NSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Google has REQUIRED the feds to obey the laws. MS actively works with all govs. for example, the case of the chinese author who was jailed because Yahoo was used; Supposedly, China gov actually had used BOTH Yahoo and MS, but choose to put info about yahoo because MS was closer to the gov. MS has ZERO issues about ignoring the constitution or any rights as long as they get theirs.
How are your math skills? One of the top in nation? NSA wants you. If you want a job doing sysadmin, then you can work for one of the big gov. contractors and they will put you in various locations. Of course, you will need top secret clearance.
The good news is that this datacenter is just ONE of their many. I am surprised that this news got out.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Of COURSE data mining is ineffective.
Consider the following analogy. A company creates a test that is 99.9% accurate to detect a rare genetic disease. 1 person in 10,000 has the disease.
Let's say your test comes back positive. You should be worried, right? I mean, 99.9% accuracy, and you came back positive.
Actually, no. Let's say you test 1,000,000 people. Of those, 100 will actually have the disease, and 999,900 will not. With 99.9% accuracy, you'll see:
* Of the 999,900 people who do NOT have the disease, about 1000 people will incorrectly test positive.
* Essentially all of the 100 people with the disease will also test positive.
1,100 people tested positive. Only 100 of those have the disease. This means that, even of the people who test positive, 91% do NOT have the disease. Statisticians call this kind of problem is called "Type II Error", which is a major problem for detecting rare conditions in a large population, even with a very accurate test.
Why does this relate to NSA data mining? Even if you're paranoid, the number of terrorists operating in the US is very small. Even if we concede that NSA data mining/profiling is very accurate (something I personally don't), it will STILL be the case that the vast number of identified individuals will be "false positives."
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.
During the civil war the slaves developed a method of communication that went unnoticed except by those who knew about it.
They would sing song in the fields that woudl help to spread the word regarding teh undrground railroad.
Today common conversation communication can as well be used where there really is not anything to decipher.
Language and its abstraction work by attaching meaning and only work as well as the argeed upon meaning by those using teh abstraction.
It doesn't matter what meaning is attached so long as those using it understand what is being communicated
Everyone has heard of double speak, where what is communicated is meant to be perceived by the public one way but internally the very same words mean the opposite of what the public perceives. and this is just one example.
There is a saying, "locks as for honest people" meaning here if some dishonest group wanted to communicate without concern for NSA data mining, they could do so easily.
However, considering the massive amounts of data that is transfered from voice to digital on a daily or hourly basis and what the limits we have in computing power, its simple not possible to data mine for the terrorist threats from terrorists who want to avoid exposure and use such common conversation meaning dishonesty.
But it is very possible, very probable, and very reliable that such data mining be used to determine the attitudes of mass population mindsets and mindsets of population sections as well as spying on targeted US citizens that might influence such population in a direction counter to the "why determine the populations mindset and changes in it?" The unsuspecting American public is so easily influenced by the media so by knowing the overall attitudes of the American public and using the media to influence American attitudes, you have a feedback loop of CONTROL.
To properly address terrorist threats is to simply remove the reasons any terrorist group could play off of, that they won't be able to gain a following.
The World Trade Center was attacked on two different dates. The NSA had to know it was a target and why.
It was because of the effects of the trillion dollar bet in south East Asia. Even Ted Turner publicly said 9/11 was an act of desperation and he'd know because his CNN News did a story on the effects as did also ABC. Follow the Money is the reality here.
This was avoidable but caused by greed. And on the other hand there is What The World Wants that shows that we do have the manpower, knowledge and not only the natural resources but the finances to remove reasons for terrorists to gain a following. And even more important, the question of: Why is this not being done?
Given the death and torture imposed upon innocent people during the Spanish inquisition and the fact Galileo was exonerated so very very late (1992 where it only really was to serve the church not this innocent but long dead person) and the fact that Indonesia by CIA records is 88% Muslim, its clear that religion is an excuse both ways. An excuse to use by the bad, be the bad being believers or non-believers. But 9/11 was about money, wrongful World Stock Market manipulations backed by political controlled military, hence the Pentagon and probable White house targets. It was about money not religion, regardless of what you call such evil dishonesty as happened in the stock market.
But if you wanted to get a very accurate view of the general population attitudes for such a media feedback loop of CONTROL , then what the NSA is doing with data mining will clearly work.
...they would do good to read at least this portion of a speech by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government just last week.
I find it interesting that the linked "article" is actually an opinion piece from an "alternative newsweekly". It makes a lot of assumptions and unwarranted logical leaps; long on paranoia and short on facts. In any event, here's bit of history, with the important parts in bold. I doubt many people will be interested in what the leaders in the Intelligence Community actually have to say for themselves, their missions, and the law.
A political enemy, phone records, bank records and a SQL query.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Given the history and function of the the NSA, it probably isn't going to be doing data mining, or anything else that they actually SAY it's going to be doing.
How's this for paranoia:
It's likely that the NSA cut a deal with Microsoft decades ago to allow a back door into any system running MS products. The Chinese now manufacture most of the computer hardware and are working to include hardware based, OS-independent back doors into as many systems as they can. Since a back door built into a chip is almost undetectable, the NSA is ramping up it's ability to counter hardware-based system intrusions and they require chip fabbing abilities to accomplish this. The nearby MS facility serves as a convenient repository of OS & systems expertise in order to seamlessly integrate the american controlled hardware based back doors into the OS.
Paranoid enough?
OK, time to go back on the meds...
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
damn you... where is my tinfoil hat. who knows how to make a Faraday cage.
"Don't Forget to Salt the Fries"
Construction on the new NSA facility (old Sony bldg) started long before MS had finalized work to build the data center in San Antonio. The two are not related in anything other than the fact that they are both in San Antonio; it's not like they can walk over to MS Datacenter with a thumb drive and ask for all their data. It's _just_ a datacenter; coordination between MS and NSA would likely happen in Washington or Redmond.
There are other datacenters in the Westover Hills part of San Antonio; Lowes (or Home Depot, I can't remember) and Stream Realty to name two.
So, for all the conspiracy theory fanatics out there. It comes down to the all-mighty dollar, not some nefarious deed to spy on your daily surfing and email habits....unless of course your are a child predator, drug dealer, human trafficker, organized crime-lord, etc.
TimeOut
Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office
Remember that little spat over the Total Information Awareness project back in 2001? You know, the one where after a lot of public pressure Congress tried to de-fund the program?
I am officially gone from
Clever plot but I do believe you're wrong.
Yes, the Chinese certainly make a lot of computer hardware, but those aren't quite the chinese you were thinking of. Not to mention the Thai, the Singaporians, the Germans, even the French and the Americans who do also manufacture a lot of your computer parts.
A backdoor for the NSA in microsoft products is not unfathomable; if they were determined they'd do it. Then again, SELinux is funded by the NSA, so I don't quite know how that all fits in...
Thanks NSA, for giving us the irrefutable evidence that, indeed, Microsoft is DIRECTLY involved in spying on America.
Spend your dollars wisely, America. Getting(and keeping) Microsoft OFF your computer, entirely, now directly equates to keeping the NSA off it as well.
Since SELinux was developed by the NSA, it has to have backdoors.
But it's open source and part of Linux, so it must be airtight.
*head explode*
(Maybe generalities are bad?)
You mean a decades-old pearl of wisdom attributed to MINIX creator Andy Tanenbaum?
Microsoft will even pay for the fiber optic cable if the NSA will share the intel with them, so they can rip their customers off even more than they do.
They already let the NSA try to break Vista when it was being developed - meaning that the NSA probably found ten ways to break into Vista machines, then shared seven of them with Microsoft and kept the other three to themselves.
If you use Vista, you're wide open to the NSA.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What will Obama do with the prisoners? Answer: turn them over to military prisons in the US - where they'll get the exact same treatment they got in Guantanamo.
Or he'll turn them over to the US Bureau of Prisons - where they'll get the exact same treatment they got in Guantanamo - just like US prisoners do.
Where do you think all these brutal methods were developed - in US prisons. Most of the people involved in the Iraq Abu Ghraib abuses were US correctional officers. The Iraqi prison system was developed by correctional officials from states with the worst abuses in the state prison systems.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What the article doesn't say is that the NSA leased the former Sony site in 2005, with plans to locate as many as 6,000 employees at the site. It had scaled back those plans in 2006, but then decided to build a data center on the property in 2007. Microsoft's project certainly confirmed San Antonio's qualities as a data center site, but it's not really a case of the NSA following Microsoft.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
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.
They forgot to mention the other mother lode of data centers.
Also, San Antonio has a lot of IT people with security clearances, which may also be useful for them.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
very easy, but you have to use raw materials you personally acquire from local sources, weld them together in a large sphere in a tight grid pattern and to close the shape you'll have to finish the welding from inside. Best to complete the welding in complete silence away from any observers in a location that will remain secret.