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?
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)
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
I agree, but let's not forget the system he had in place before the election and how that helped him. The first question I had after he was elected was what will he do with this massive communication system he has built? Seems he intends to keep using it, which I think is a step in the right direction.
All points of time and space are connected.
...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.
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.