Booting Up: New NSA Data Farm Takes Root In Utah... [View all]
Source: NPR
[font size="1"]The National Security Agency says its massive new data center near Salt Lake City will enhance the agency's ability to analyze the email, text message, cellphone and landline metadata it collects.[/font]
The National Security Agency won't say exactly when it will fully rev up its newest and biggest data farm in the Salt Lake City suburb of Bluffdale, Utah... ...But, according to NSA spokeswoman Vanee' Vines, "We turn each machine on as it is installed, and the facility is ready for that installation to begin." Those machines are computer servers — enough to fill four warehouse-size "data halls" covering 100,000 square feet.
...More than 1 million additional square feet here are devoted to generators, diesel storage tanks, power substations, backup battery banks, water tanks, chilling plants and an office building. The annual maintenance costs are pegged at $20 million.
"No Intent Here To Become Big Brother"
"We built it big because we could," says Lonny Anderson, the NSA's chief information officer, who runs the agency's data acquisition, storage and processing effort. "It's a state-of-the-art facility," Anderson adds. "It's the nicest data center in the U.S. government — maybe one of the nicest data centers there is."
It also gives the federal government's intelligence agencies easier access to the email, text message, cellphone and landline metadata the NSA collects, "for foreign intelligence purpose[s]," as Vine insists...
Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/23/225381596/booting-up-new-nsa-data-farm-takes-root-in-utah
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