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NSA Utah Data Center Blueprints Reveal It Holds Less Than Thought
cold fjord writes "Break out the tin foil hats, and make them double thick. Forbes reports, 'The NSA will soon cut the ribbon on a facility in Utah ... the center will be up and running by the "end of the fiscal year," ....Brewster Kahle is the engineering genius behind the Internet Archive,... Kahle estimates that a space of that size could hold 10,000 racks of servers .... "So we are talking $1 billion in machines." Kahle estimates each rack would be capable of storing 1.2 petabytes of data. ... all the phone calls made in the U.S. in a year would take up about 272 petabytes, ... If Kahle's estimations and assumptions are correct, the facility could hold up to 12,000 petabytes, or 12 exabytes – ... but is not of the scale previously reported. Previous estimates would allow the data center to easily hold hypothetical 24-hour video and audio recordings of every person in the United States for a full year. The data center's capacity as calculated by Kahle would only allow the NSA to create archives for the 13 million people living in the Los Angeles metro area. Even that reduced number struck Internet infrastructure expert Paul Vixie as high given the space allocated for data in the facility. ... he came up with an estimate of less than 3 exabytes of data capacity for the facility. That would only allow for 24-hour recordings of what every one of Philadelphia's 1.5 million residents was up to for a year. Still, he says that's a lot of data pointing to a 2009 article about Google planning multiple data centers for a single exabyte of info. '" Update: 07/25 16:33 GMT by T : For even more, see this story.
No entity on earth should have such gigantic datacenters dedicated to spying everyone whether they are american or not. The very nature of those activities no matter their scale is already crossing the line and shall not be tolerated.
The US is the easy case. Until you find a way to get China, North Korea, Iran, (oppressive regime X), et al. to give them up, and various terrorist groups to stop attacking*, you're going to be stuck with it. If you are going to be stuck with it, the free democratic nations need intelligence agencies that are capable of helping to protect their societies. That brings you back to the US and its allies which cooperate to defend each other. Unilateral disarmament in the face of aggression tends to have significant negative consequences. Nothing will change for the good unless there is a better reason and plan than, "I don't like it, I don't want it."
* And make no mistake about the terrorist groups, they have their own independent agendas. They are not simply reacting to Europe or the Anglosphere. Al Qaida wants to reestablish the Islamic Caliphate government that was dissolved after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, and conquer the world for Islam.
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
"This was submitted by cold fjord..."
Lets take a close look at what "Cold Fjord" has been up to for the last week.
July 24, 2013 Posting from 11:06am --- 11:25pm Total Posts:13 Submissions:1 Longest Break from Slashdot:8hrs
July 23, 2013 Posting from 12:09am --- 11:46pm Total Posts:30 Submissions:2 Longest Break from Slashdot: 4hrs
July 22, 2013 3 Posts Total, 1 in the AM, 2 in the PM DAY OFF (no links in posts-posting from a phone?)
July 21, 2013 Posting from 8:54am --- 10:29pm Total Posts:18 Submissions:0 Longest Break from Slashdot: 4hrs
July 20, 2013 3 Posts Total, all 3 in the AM DAY OFF (no links in posts-posting from a phone?)
July 19, 2013 Posting from 4:05am --- 9:57am Total Posts:18 Submissions:0 Longest Break from Slashdot: 8hrs
July 18, 2013 Posting from 1;22am --- 10:43pm Total Posts:18 Submissions:0 Longest Break from Slashdot: 4hrs x2
11 Submissions total in the last month.
As I've stated in a previous post ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3948321&cid=44218623 ), I suspect "Cold Fjord" of having at least 2 other accounts--they all use Northern European references--so, if you do the math, posting at the rate he has been with this account, on 3 accounts, he has a full week of work doing nothing but posting on Slashdot.
Also, since I stated my beliefs about "Cold Fjord", my past posts are slowly but surely being moderated into the negative, where many of those posts were +2-3 territory originally. I've also not had a single post moderated over +2 since then, nor do I ever see the actual reason for the moderation (insightful, etc) unless I am in the negative.
Now that you know all of that, actually read some of the bullshit he spews in his posts, then read the following document outlining how forums can be manipulated, therefore manipulating public perception.
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
I'll make no bones about it--I think "Cold Fjord" is a paid forum-manipulator. I can only guess who actually pays him.
Damn, dude. You are fucking stupid.
"Cold Fjord" responds to my post 2 minutes later with unrelated garbage...and gets modded upwards, +2 insightful 2 minutes after that? Does anyone else need proof that he is using numerous accounts to farm moderation points, which he then uses to mod himself up and others down?
Again, see the following link for a full explanation of his tactics, then compare to his post/submission history--his favorite tactic is "forum-sliding" where he posts inane/irrelevant crap to force other posts--the ones he doesn't want viewed--off the bottom of the screen, thereby decreasing the chance those posts are modded upward. He is currently trying to push another post of mine in this discussion that is currently at +5 further down the screen by posting above it. He is also attempting to distract from the post he just responded to (mine) by changing the subject.
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
From The Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies:
"4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues."
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm