The NSA's New Spy Facilities are 7 Times Bigger Than the Pentagon

[dkf]

He works at one of the three-letter intelligence agencies and oversees construction of a $1.2 billion surveillance data center in Utah that is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets. Long Island native Harvey Davis, a top National Security Agency official, needs that commanding presence. His role is to supervise infrastructure construction worldwide for NSA, which is part of the Defense Department. That involves tending to logistics, military installations, as well as power, space and cooling for all NSA data centers.

In May, crews broke ground on a $792 million computing center at the agency’s headquarters near Baltimore that will complement the Utah site. Together the Utah center and Maryland’s 28-acre computer farm span 228 acres—more than seven times the size of the Pentagon.

During an interview with Government Executive in June, amid the uproar over leaked details of NSA’s domestic espionage activities, Davis describes the 200-acre Utah facility as very transparent: “Only brick and mortar.” A data center just provides energy and chills machines, he says.

About 6,500 contractors, along with more than 150 Army Corps of Engineers and NSA workers, including some with special needs, are assigned to the project. Davis perks up when he talks about the hundreds of individuals with disabilities he has steered into NSA.

But ask him why the facility is so big and what’s inside, and he is less forthcoming. “I think we’re crossing into content. It’s big because it’s required to be big,” says Davis, a 30-year veteran of the spy agency.

At NSA, secrecy is not exclusive to intelligence analysts. Every civil servant in the Installations and Logistics Directorate Davis leads has a security clearance. He earned his in the early 1980s, entering the agency with a master’s degree in business administration, experience managing inventory for a women’s apparel chain, and a yearning for a higher calling than retail.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2013/07/nsas-big-dig/67406/

[cantbeserious]

1. Size Alone Justifies The Suspicion That The Surveillance Is Comprehensive and Illegal

eom

[PowerToThePeople]

2. my laptop is probably large enough to hold all terrorist communications.

[snappyturtle]

3. Maybe I'm just grumpy this evening but it seems as if the security

projects, programs and agencies are forever growing. So many in need in
the country and our tax dollars are being spent on projects like this.
No offense dkf...thanks for posting.

[dkf]

4. You are right, it's a travesty.

[truedelphi]

6. On the Daily Show or The Colbert Report, it was stated

That TSA is now going to be "securing us" before we go into stadiums for rock concerts, or sporting events, and they will also be at bus stations.

Is this where the Social Security funds that they are raiding are going?

[snappyturtle]

7. Everything is so crazy lately that some nut probably has re-defined

the "social" and "security" to apply to securing us at social gatherings!

[JDPriestly]

10. My view exactly, snappyturtle.

At this time of outsourcing, importing and just not enough jobs that pay enough to live on, we should be spending money on people and jobs and not on the monitoring of electronic communications.

Getting Americans into decent jobs would do more for our security than all the anti-terrorist paraphernalia in the world.

[snappyturtle]

11. OH, I hear you! I've been amusing myself late afternoon into the

evening and now into the depth of night with youtube videos. Some are
pure conspiracy and others not so much. But what I've gleaned is
that we're in deep trouble. The MIC and all this security b.s. is not
for the benefit of the American people but to the corporations. It's
a very scary place. JOBS would really be the equalizer to bring us
back to some sort of normalacy that I remember when I thought
the American dream was attainable.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. We Are All Undercover Agents - Krytyka Polityczna, Poland

If 4 million people have access to confidential information, is this information still secret?

http://watchingamerica.com/News/218010/we-are-all-undercover-agents/

Nowadays, even storekeepers must have security clearance; not only those who work directly for the government, but also these carrying over boxes for the government’s private contractors. At the moment, more than 4 million Americans are given “top secret” clearance. Five hundred thousand of them are working for private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, which hired Snowden, where 12,000 workers have clearance and access to the data which are likely to "leak."

Regardless of what Washington thinks of Snowden, the conclusions are as follows: With such a large number of people having access to “top secret” information, leakage is inevitable. And this whole security clearance “legion” — created in America’s paranoid reaction to Sept. 11 — is a consequence of secrecy about everything. David E. Sanger writes in The Washington Post that for Washington, everything is confidential and everything is online. Bradley Manning downloaded documents from the embassy in Beijing while staying in Iraq; Snowden operated at a small base in Hawaii.

Among actually important “top secret” documents, there is a whole lot of completely unnecessary information, such as regular press releases.

To process such a huge amount of data a whole army of people, programs and money is needed, not to mention the fact that government agencies tend to duplicate themselves and often do the same job. If 4 million people have access to the confidential information, is this information still secret? And finally: Is it really surprising that among these 4 million people there is someone who will want to share it with the rest of the world? It is only a wonder that there are not more Snowdens or Mannings.

[KoKo]

8. There probably are and they aren't as "altruistic" as Manning and Snowden...

They can sell to the highest bidder...or perhaps use the info privately for their own purposes to get what they want from someone they can target.

That's why Manning and Snowden are important. They warned us. What about those who had access to their same info who may seek profit and reward.

[JEB]

9. Some body is getting rich off this BS.

Wasteful doesn't seem severe enough to describe such a colossal rip off.