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.

Comments

Terrorism?

[MindlessAutomata]

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?

Re:Terrorism?

[theaveng]

This isn't about terrorism.

This is about catching other types of criminals like people distributing images of child sex, people discussing marijuana growing, people discussing anti-government ideas (i.e. like the LP), and so on. It's a way to circumvent the Constitution's requirement for a search warrant.

Re:Terrorism?

[Mikkeles]

'Why are so many Americans so certain that everything their government does is an attempt to oppress them? '

Six thousand years of historical evidence about governments.

In other news

[mysidia]

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)

Re:It won't be shut down because there's no outcry

[jcr]

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

Re:Microsoft is the mother lode?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Maybe Google has better practices in terms of security of their data centers?

Well, for starters, they're not running Windows...

Re:SaaS?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I wouldn't be too concerned with your business-confidential data leaking into the private sector via some unscrupulous NSA employee (who have a higher bar to employment I would hope, than say a TSA employee).

"Rogue" agents are not the problem. Sanctioned industrial espionage is the problem.

In theory they only do it against foreign corporations, but as multinationals become the norm, that line is becoming increasingly less meaningful. The ultimate result of such policies is likely to be spying against the competitors of the currently favored multinationals.

Here's one article about how Echelon was used for industrial espionage - there are plenty more about the NSA and other agencies that are not Echelon-specific either.