Homeland Security in a small town...what could it be?

I grew up in a small town in southside Virginia, population maybe 10,000. Mostly made up of older retirees (it sits on a 50,000 acre lake), leftover residents from before the closing of all the factories and industries in town and other regular down to earth, middle class small town folk. It is a nice, quiet, picturesque small southern town, very slow paced and friendly, but really not much there.

Today I drive up for a visit with a friend of mine who still lives there and as we were talking he told me of the latest develoment in town. It seems that the town has been looking to lure new business and industry to move in and fill an empty industrial park where a candy factory once stood. He proceeds to tell me that the new space is soon to be occupied and the town is abuzz, unfortunately the new inhabitants will not be a company, corporation or factory. Instead it has been purchased by the Federal government in order to build the single largest data communications center in the southeastern U.S. and has been officially purchased by the Department of Homeland Security.

Wow I thought, how the heck can this be? And then as we were driving through town there was a sign by the main hwy into town saying XXXX, Virginia welcomes the Dept of Homeland Security!! He also said that he has friends who are working as contractors for the building renovation. It is to be fortified heavily, they are currently digging some kind of trenches to accomadate the massive amount of cables and utility wiring. It will employ over 6,000 people, many who are being hired and brought in from an outside company owned by Ross Perot. The land that it will sit on will be over 200 acres across. According to my friend, who is a local contractor, the building is going to be equipped with thumb scan entrances to the heavily guarded main building, but the internal core is to be retinal scan recognition only. I am no expert, but wouldnt that indicate that this facility will be used for something extremely top secret?

It is sad to admit, but the first thought that came to mind was possible internment camp/ evesdropping/wiretapping compound. Why would they be building such a place in a small, sleepy town like this? Believe me when I say that this is the LAST place on earth I would ever think that something like this could be built. Is this a bad sign or am I overeacting? Frankly seeing that sign in my home town sent a bad chill up my spine.

A lot of data centers have similar security features depending on the data being stored there. Data is kept in different tiers, the higher the tier the more secure because it has the most sensitive information. A Tier IV data center generally has the most secure buildings around with fingerprint scanners, roving patrols, etc. A Tier IV system also has an almost 100% availability.

www.sterlingnetwork.com...

So this place would basically be the nerve center for evesdropping, wire tapping and all of that other data that they love to compile on us? That makes me sick to know that this will done from my home town, and I am curious as to why a data center would need that much land and space to function. Keep in mind that data center could also be the official explanation for it's existence, while actually serving a completely different function. I get the feeling that "data centers" are probably popping up in a lot of small, unassuming towns throughout the country, without any official mentioning of it in any news source (I researched this suject and couldnt find any official press clipping or info about it)

Im sure they told the nice people out in Nevada that they were only building a U.S. Army "data center" and to not be alarmed...Groom Lake we will call it. This type of thing makes me nervous for all of us.

They aren't just government operated. And they aren't involved in eavesdropping or wire tapping. There are actually very few people at the facility at all. They keep a skeleton crew to keep things working and that's it. It's basically a giant server farm, that stores critical information in a network.

A data center is a facility used for housing a large amount of electronic equipment, typically computers and communications equipment. As the name implies, a data center is usually maintained by an organization for the purpose of handling the data necessary for its operations. A bank for example may have a data center, where all its customers' account information is maintained and transactions involving these data are carried out. Practically every company that is mid-sized or larger has some kind of data center with the larger companies often having dozens of data centers. Most large cities have many purpose-built data center buildings in secure locations close to telecommunications services. Most colocation centers and Internet peering points are located in these kinds of facilities.

As data is a crucial aspect of most organizational operations, organizations tend to be very protective of their data. A data center must therefore keep high standards for assuring the integrity and functionality of its hosted computer environment. This is depicted in its physical and logical layout. The standard TIA-942 describes optimum Data Center design.

A data center can occupy one room of a building, one or more floors, or an entire building. Most of the equipment is often in the form of servers racked up into 19 inch rack cabinets, which are usually placed in single rows forming corridors between them. This allows people access to the front and rear of each cabinet. Servers differ greatly in size from 1U servers to huge storage silos which occupy many tiles on the floor. Some equipment such as mainframe computers and storage devices are often as big as the racks themselves, and are placed alongside them.

1U represents one rack unit of space. A Rack Unit is 1.75 inches in height (44.49 mm). The sizes are believed to have been derived from telecommunication equipment used in the second world war.

en.wikipedia.org...

The government reps who met with town officials told them that the facility would employ between 4,000-6,000 people.m There is already a mad dash for housing, property is being bought up rapidly and the demand for new houses to be built has skyrocketed. The data centers that you describe will have a skeleton crew? I dont really call 4,000-6,000 people a skeleton crew, would you?

The size of the crew depends on the size of the center. You have to allow for three shifts, 24/7/365. A massive center of the size you're talking about WOULD have a much larger crew than say a bank data center that takes up one much smaller building. And skeleton crew might not have been the right words for it. It's a much smaller crew than say a data entry center would have on hand, or a "regular" office of similar size would have on hand, because they're really there to monitor things and be able to react quickly to any problems. A Tier 4 data center requires a 99.6%+ data availability rating, with something like one failure allowed. So that means having a crew on hand to respond rapidly to any problems. From the sound of things this is a pretty substantial building, which means it's going to have a pretty significant computer system in it, which will mean a bigger crew on hand.

I forgot to mention that they have commandeered the small local municipal airport and are going to revamp it in order to accomodate high volumes of air traffic.

Why would they obscure such a facility in the wooded area of a small hick town that isnt within 100 miles of a major military base? I feel like the presence of governmental compound will do strange things to the structure and livibility of such a small, tight knit community. I feel like the NWO has set up shop in my back yard.

What does being near a military base have to do with it? DHS doesn't use military bases. They use regular airports to fly their planes through. And there probably WILL be a lot of air traffic while they're building the facility. It's a lot cheaper and safer to move massive amounts of computer equipment by air than by truck, especially if it's to a remote area like this, that already has an airport that just needs minor improvements to handle the traffic.