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OTUS THE HEAD CAT : Federal eavesdropping center going up in Madison County
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Northwest Edition

Posted on Saturday, November 29, 2008

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Dear Otus, Last weekend my family and I took a trip to Benton County hoping to get a look at the new communications storage facility being excavated somewhere near War Eagle. We had no luck. There were no signs and we wasted six hours trying to find out where the thing is. Nobody could give us directions either. It drove me nuts. You’d think that since Arkansas landed the nation’s huge new Homeland Security eavesdropping center that’s going to keep a copy of everybody’s e-mail and cell phone calls that they would want to show it off to the public while it’s under construction. — Norm Alyseine Clarksville Dear Norm, It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and an equal pleasure to let you know you were just a few months too early. Public tours of the new Homeland Interior Security Government Operations Communications Data and Intelligence Mining Operation (HISGOCDIMO — pronounced his-GAWK-diemo ) are not scheduled until the end of May. Until then, work continues apace on the 842-acre site that includes 1, 720-foot Sandstone Mountain. You can observe work going on in the distance from the overlook on Arkansas 127 about five miles east of the turnoff to War Eagle Caverns. The facility entrance is alongside Rambo Creek and will be accessed via Kirk Hollow Road.

That road is currently blocked off and local residents are forced to use Cobble Lane to reach the homes farther north that overlook Beaver Lake.

The government picked the Sandstone Mountain site because the land was fairly cheap, the mountain has a steep southern sandstone face that will easily accommodate the mile-deep rabbit warren data mining facility, and the Interstate 540 corridor that includes Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, Bentonville and Bella Vista lies a mere 15 miles to the west.

That’s a big plus because the facility will eventually employ 2, 400 highly skilled data engineers who will initially be trained at the University of Arkansas Tyson College of Information Technology.

Supervisors and upper management will receive additional training at the university’s Sam M. Walton College of Business Acumen.

In addition, the mountain will be relatively easy to secure. It’s scenic, and its remoteness has an advantage over more urban areas where the possibility of informational compromise poses a higher threat.

Work has already been completed on the 40-acre landscaped “green” parking area, which will feature shredded indigenous walnut shells over dolphin-safe drains to collect rainwater to be recycled into myriad facility uses.

The median islands in the parking plaza will be used to grow row crops.

Green will be the theme of the entire $ 18 billion facility, which will be 95 percent underground and a constant 68 degrees. Wind turbines made from recycled plastic Coke bottles will line the ridge above and be coupled with solar panels to keep the facility totally off the grid and self-sufficient.

If $ 18 billion sounds like a lot for national security, it’s not. Now is no time to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

The mission of HISGOCDIMO is simple. The database will monitor and store the Internet browsing habits, e-mail, credit card purchases and mobile telephone records of more than 300 million Americans in an effort to root out threats to our national security.

Granted, it is a daunting task, but the state-of-the-art HISGOCDIMO computers (they can handle 15 petabytes of data every year ) will be ever vigilant, and if nefarious ne’er-do-wells think they can hide like Waldo among the clutter, they have another think coming. The government already conducts random and occasional checks of e-mail and cell phone usage, but the facility has not existed before to .....

we have some left?

since when?

Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday.