NSA Building $860 Million Data Center in Maryland

[FarCenter]

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, including 70,000 square feet of technical space.

Last month the NSA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building the High Performance Computing Center-2, an NSA-run facility that will be located on base at Fort Meade, which is home to much of the agency’s existing data center operations. The data center will be supported by 60 megawatts of power capacity, and will use both air-cooled and liquid-cooled equipment.

The NSA is already building a massive data center in Utah, investing up to $1.5 billion in a project that will feature up to 1 million square feet of facilities.

The construction at Fort Meade will see investment of $400 million in fiscal 2013 and $431 million in fiscal 2014. Up to 6,000 workers will be involved in the construction and development phase, the NSA said.

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/06/06/nsa-to-build-860-million-hpc-center-in-maryland/

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Then there is this:

U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
By Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, Published: THURSDAY, JUNE 06, 5:43 PM ET

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who know about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

An internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year. According to the briefing slides, obtained by The Washington Post, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.

That is a remarkable figure in an agency that measures annual intake in the trillions of communications. It is all the more striking because the NSA, whose lawful mission is foreign intelligence, is reaching deep inside the machinery of American companies that host hundreds of millions of American-held accounts on American soil.

The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.”

http://m.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html?hpid=z1

[DJ13]

2. See, its not spying, its a jobs program

[FarCenter]

12. It's what they mean by "building infrastructure"

[ucrdem]

3. .

[avaistheone1]

4. We are the major funder to the UN. No?

[ucrdem]

5. Yes, and I think that part was the gag

the Clintons were supposed to be using the UN to secretly wage black helicopter jihad on Middle America if I remember correctly.

[dickthegrouch]

10. Only when the US pays its bill

There was a huge row a few years ago because the US was so far in arrears with its UN payments. To the extent that they were seriously considering moving the UN HQ off US soil.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/25/us-un-usa-arrears-idUSTRE70O7DW20110125

[okaawhatever]

6. The question isn't about the storage, it's about whether they can access it w/o a warrant. The

existence of mass storage of data isn't new. It is stored and then if the nsa has intel that a certain someone is a terrorist, they can then petition the fisa court for access to the info. I want the press to tell me the story, the whole story. I don't want headlines, I want to know what's really going on.

[ucrdem]

7. Also a lot of this capacity is intended for international cyberwarfare.

Which is a very big deal.

[okaawhatever]

8. Help me understand. What is int'l cyberwarfare? nt

[ucrdem]

9. The stuff in the Guardian story is domestic business traffic

over landlines I believe. Int'l cyberwarfare is mainly forking with China and Russia and defending against attacks from Somalian online pirates and of course e-qaeda.

Anyway that's why the Army is involved in most of this stuff. The details are typically unclear from the articles which are naturally sensationalized and probably don't have a lot of hard data to begin with. But that's what most of this stuff is being built for.

[okaawhatever]

11. OK. Thanks. I'm glad they're doing something. We are constantly being breeched by hackers. nt