Slashdot Mirror
NSA Building $860 Million Data Center In Maryland
1sockchuck writes "As its current data collection makes headlines, the National Security Agency is continuing to expand its data storage and processing capabilities. The agency recently broke ground on an $860 million data center at Fort Meade, Maryland that will span more than 600,000 square feet. The project will provide additional IT capacity beyond the NSA's controversial Utah data center. The new facility will be supported by 60 megawatts of power and use both air-cooled and liquid-cooled equipment."
Pfft. We all know you're a double agent, Anonymous Coward. How else can you explain your schizophrenic posting history?!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Cry me a river. Regardless of how much lip service is given to the current fiscal pain the gov is shouldering there is always a revenue source for pet projects and nothing returned to their source of funds (us taxpayers).
Now I won't have to go through the trouble of backing up any of my e-mail!
It's become clear that the federal government no longer serves the interests of the people.
Does anyone have suggestions for fixing the problem?
Whenever some "government done did wrong again" article comes up, the comments are all non-constructive: blithe unconcern, fatalism, pessimism, and so on.
What constructive actions can be taken, and how can the people be encouraged to support these actions?
My one idea: If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
(And no, replies of "you won't accomplish anything because of this reason" are not constructive.)
Given advances in technology, LOC is no longer a clear, effective or sufficient unit of measurement. I propose we move instead to fractions of an NSA data center. Of course, the fraction would approach 1 as one gets near the capacity of the whole internet and all current communications, so it would always be useful.
I assume you must be either a failing agent provocateur or a nitwit.
Benjamin Franklin said Americans had a republic, if they could keep it.
This is the time work on keeping it by:
- Letters to congress put in the post box
- Voting for a change of representation at the ballot box
- Some time on the soap box.
- Some government employees sitting in front of the jury box.
Suggested topics:
- IRS suppression of legitimate peaceful political opposition groups
- IRS suppression of legitimate peaceful religous groups
- Possible involvement by the FBI, EPA, and OSHA in the above
- IRS seizure of 60,000,000 medical records they are not entitled to in breach of the 4th Amendment
- Unprecedented Justice Department investigation of reporters
- Stonewalling by government officials before congress and refusing to turn over documents
- Attempts by the administration to disarm the public by outlawing weapons seldom used to commit crimes - semiautomatic rifles
- The very wide dragnet by the NSA when considered with the above
Slashdot has had stories on much of that recently. Search for IRS, or AP, etc.
It is legitimate for the NSA to monitor people in direct communication with terrorist groups, and other terrorists*. But this, considered in light of the above is cause for concern. Congress better be doing some good oversight.
* Genuine terrorists trying to bomb, shoot, poison or otherwise kill innocent people, typically in large numbers, with a very broad understanding of innocent.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Unemployed workers have no lobbyists. The security industry does.
"logging machine"...
On the contrary, the NSA has some great minds working for them, and they are probably doing some very interesting and useful analysis with all that data. The problem is, what great minds create, can be misused by others.
All this power is supposed to be used to catch terrorists. But now that this database is out in the open, a lot of other folks will find reasons why they must also have access to it.
Think of a simple police detective at the scene of a murder interviewing potential witnesses and suspects. He could immediately get a topology drawn of who knows who, and which ones have been chatting a lot with each other. Usually the poor policeman needs to do a lot of grunt and foot work to map this out. And get warrants for phone records. This would really help his investigation a lot.
But do we really want data collected this way to be used that way . . . ? What will prevent a slippery slide of more and more agencies and organizations getting access to this data for their own purposes . . . ? Can the DEA escalate their war on drugs to also be a matter of national security? This info could also help the IRS track down money launderers as well . . . how about the IRS . . . ?
Now that the government has this "Critical Tool" at their disposal, the more important question is not how can it be used, but how it should not be used.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I thought that the US was in debt so far that they're defaulting on the bonds they sold to China? And the government has 860 million to throw around just to find out where their citizens are eating lunch?
It's amazing that this data centre is worth more to the US government that financial liquidity.
Don't be a fool. Terrorism is not, and never was a threat. More people are killed by cancer every DAY than have been killed by terrorist attacks in this country in all of history. Imagine if they'd used the money from these 2 data centers for cancer research. Either their idiots or their goal has nothing to do with terrorists.