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NSA Data Center Brings Concerns Over Security and Privacy and Jobs
chamilto0516 writes "Twenty-five miles due south of Salt Lake City, a massive construction project is nearing completion. The heavily secured site belongs to the National Security Agency. The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. Asked if the Utah Data Center would hold the data of American citizens, Alexander [director of the NSA] said, 'No...we don't hold data on U.S. citizens,' adding that the NSA staff 'take protecting your civil liberties and privacy as the most important thing that they do, and securing this nation.' But critics, including former NSA employees, say the data center is front and center in the debate over liberty, security and privacy." According to University of Utah computing professor Matthew Might, one thing is clear about the Utah Data Center, it means good paying jobs. "The federal government is giving money to the U.'s programming department to develop jobs to fill the NSA building," he says.
Three data centers for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One data center to rule them all, One data center to find them,
One data center to bdata center them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
the NSA staff 'take protecting your civil liberties and privacy as the most important thing that they do, and securing this nation.'
Is anyone else having difficulty parsing this sentence?
Job creation is a horrible justification for spending taxpayers' money on spying.
The government is borrowing money from China to pay for jobs of people who spy on China.
I wonder what would happen when this flow of cash stops.
If you understand the story of Trailblazer and Tom Drake, you understand everything you need to know about this project.
While you are at it, read "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright - the NSA missed 9/11 not because of a lack of funding, but because of turf wars within the federal government between CIA, NSA, and FBI, and bureaucratic malpractice. Theoretically that was fixed under Bush when the CIA became just another of the dozen+ spy agencies under the umbrella of the DNI.
Most empires crumble when they go broke on military spending out of some paranoid delusion about the idea that they must control the world through the use of force. America was supposed to be different. . . our ideas were supposed to win, not our bullets. And they have been winning... except on our own soil, where they seem to be in sunset, as every one comes out of the woodwork to feed on the federal teat, and when you ask them to justify the billions of dollars they spend, they say "can't tell you, its classified" and start throwing people in prison.
That's why he's the director of the NSA and I'm not. Because he can say "No, it will not hold data on US Citizens," and keep a straight face. No matter how much I practiced, I'd have to laugh the evil villain laugh after making a statement like that. Even if I had all the other qualifications, that would keep me out of the job.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Mordor Utah
I'm surprised I don't see anyone here questioning this 5 zettabyte number. The biggest drives currently manufactured are 4 terabyte 3.5" drives. 5 zetabytes would require 1.25 billion of those drives. A great price on a 4TB drive right now is $190. I doubt there's enough margin in them to make this possible, but let's just say that based on the insane quantity they get them for $150 each. That's $187 billion for the drives alone, nothing for the computers and racks and air conditioning and all. The NSA's budget is estimated at 8 billion a year. $187 billion is 23 times their yearly budget. It would be about 3% of total federal spending for a year... just for the drives. Total facility costs would certainly run many times that... it would probably cost more than an entire year's military spending to build a 5 zettabyte data center.
Also, you can fit about 500 terabytes in a server cabinet. That means 10 million server cabinets. A server cabinet is about 15 cubic feet of volume. So just the cabinets alone would run 150 million cubic feet. And that's just storage, not even including computers. And it's not like you can pack them in solid, of course. If you can make a datacenter with one third of its total volume being server racks, that would be amazing. The largest building in the world is only 472 million cubic feet, this would have to equal or surpass it.
Also, the entire world wide market for hard drives is only a little over 30 billion a year... this one project would consume over 6 times as much value in hard drives as every other use in the world combined for the year.
Unless the NSA has developed their own mass storage technology that no one else knows about and is radically superior to anything commercially available, I'm guessing someone's exaggerating or got their numbers wrong.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?