Groundbreaking Ceremony Held for $1.2 Billion NSA Utah Data Center

Groundbreaking Ceremony Held for $1.2 Billion NSA Utah Data Center

www.mmdnewswire.com

The National Security Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground today on a $1.2 billion data center at Camp W.G. Williams National Guard Post here. The massive, one million square-foot facility currently is the largest U.S. Department of Defense project in the nation.
"This will bring 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs during the construction and development phase," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said at the event. "Once completed, it will support 100 to 200 permanent, high-paid employees."

More than 200 personnel attended the ceremony, including Utah Lt. Gov. Greg Bell and other state

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Related News Links:
www.bloomberg.com
www.huffingtonpost.com

Very interesting, NSA states this center will be specifically for cyber crime research and targeting but i sense an excuse for a national "Black Site"

I assume many people know of the NSA run "Room 641a" If you don't I will include some more information in the next post.

Level 3 inc. will be supporting services with high speed fiber from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. It is also interesting to note that San Francisco is a terminal point for fiber communications on the Western Coast, and is also linked to the Eastern Coast via numerous fiber lines.

Additional information to come, I don't want to get cut short here.

www.mmdnewswire.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Sounds like a mutant flea embedding itself in the artery of data flow.

$1.2 Billion is pretty substantial. I know that it costs about $6 Million to create a fairly state of the art auditorium, and about the same to make a state of the art computer lab. This thing is going to be huge, state of the art, and secure.

I wonder how many schools we could have built instead of this data center. It's going to be pointed at the American people to boot! Good luck typing anything freely on the net now!

In the likeness of Oprah: You're on a watch list, you're on a watch list, you're on a watch list, you're on a watch list!

Room 641a is an intercept facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, beginning in 2003. Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T.

Level 3 owns all the networks which terminate or pass through this center.

Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ: LVLT) is a communications and information services company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, USA. It has operating locations throughout the US and Europe. The company operates one of the largest communications and Internet backbones in the world.

PDF From Cryptome Regarding Site Outlay and Contractual Information

What happens if you take a small black room and evolve it into a black site?

You get thousands of government employees who cannot necessarily be trusted, actively interrogating and illegally accessing systems around the world and being well within legal rights to do so.

This has happened on smaller scales previously, but I believe the NSA is dedicating an entire center to cyber warfare and state funded cyber terrorism.

In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black project is conducted. Recently, the term has gained notoriety in describing secret prisons operated by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), generally outside of U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction. It can refer to the facilities that are controlled by the CIA used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain alleged unlawful enemy combatants.

As to why the facility is being built in Utah, there was apparently a detailed selection process using over 130 criteria that determined this was the best location, though US Army Corp of Engineers Brigadier General Peter Deluca was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune as saying there are “at least 50 perfect states to build a data center.”

ZDNet Article on public implications

1 million square feet for 100 - 200 permanent employees? those numbers dont sound right, it should be 1000 - 2000 employess with that large of an area... unless, this facility will be used for something else.

Yep, the numbers just don't seem to add up..

Also, there are reports surfacing of Army Corps employees being silenced already.

Taken from Cryptome Report.

REQUIREMENT: This project is required to provide a 30MW technical load data center and infrastructure for 65MW technical load
data center capacity to support mission. The project will include the following:
(1) Site
(a) Facility design goal will be to the highest LEED standard attainable within available resources and will include: sustainable site
characteristics, water and energy efficiency, materials and resources criteria, and indoor environmental quality.
(b) Mechanical and electrical plants are to be housed in separate structures to prevent transfer of noise and vibrations to the data
centers
(2) Facilities
(a) Data center technical load of 30 MW distributed across raised floor are the design parameters for the facility.
(b) The infrastructure support and administrative areas will be designed to support state-of-the-art high-performance computing
devices and associated hardware architecture.
(c) Slab floor loading of approximately 1500 pounds per square foot (PSF)
(d) Enhancements to the building for IT and security include construction as a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF),
as well as, requirements related to Antiterrorism Force Protection (ATFP).

That's one big power source for one big network data center

Also, they say it's a data center.. data centers are just that, storage locations. Not places for investigation, infiltration and obfuscation which is what is obviously being built here.

Here's some insight into the types of equipment the NSA may be using or be planning to use at these sorts of locations.

Narus is a company, now owned by Boeing which produces mass surveillance systems. It was founded in 1997 by Ori Cohen, who had been in charge of technology development for VDONet, an early media streaming pioneer.

In 2004, Narus engaged the former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, William Crowell as a director.

The NarusInsight.

System specification and capabilities

Some features of NarusInsight include:

- Scalability to support surveillance of large, complex IP networks (such as the Internet)
- High-speed Packet processing performance, which enables it to sift through the vast quantities of information that travel over the Internet.
- Normalization, Correlation, Aggregation and Analysis provide a model of user, element, protocol, application and network behaviors, in real-time. That is it can track individual users, monitor which applications they are using (e.g. web browsers, instant messaging applications, email) and what they are doing with those applications (e.g. which web sites they have visited, what they have written in their emails/IM conversations), and see how users' activities are connected to each other (e.g. compiling lists of people who visit a certain type of web site or use certain words or phrases in their emails).
- High reliability from data collection to data processing and analysis.
- NarusInsight's functionality can be configured to feed a particular activity or IP service such as security, lawful intercept or even Skype detection and blocking.
- Compliance with CALEA and ETSI.
- Certified by Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) in India for lawful intercept and monitoring systems for ISPs.

It is important to note that a single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 DSL lines or 195,000 telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.

The only way to understand this is that the government is preparing its self for the future of america. America is changing so fast. I wonder for the best or worst.

The only way to understand this is that the government is preparing its self for the future of america. America is changing so fast. I wonder for the best or worst.

add to that:

World’s Largest SSD with 2 TB Capacity Shipped by Foremay*
*the size of a laptop drive

AND this is merely the largest SSD in the Commercial sector.

The NSA quite certainly has access to exponentially more capable technologies and hardware, near all of which likely won't see the commercial market for Years.

if only trickle-down economics worked as well as trickle-down technologies and hardware


... even with a mere 10% of overall available square footage being allotted to 'data storage', AND using only the aforementioned 2Gb solid-state drives, NOT what the NSA has access to...

144" per square foot == 9.6 2TB SSDs per square foot

1M sq. ft. / 10% == 100,000 sq ft.

@ 9.6 2TB SSDs/sq. ft.

== 960,000 2TB SSD storage drives.


nearly 2 petabytes of 'data'...

.... which is well on the low end, mind you.

Originally posted by plexus
It is important to note that a single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 DSL lines or 195,000 telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.

I think it's important to note that the average person uses less than 5GB of data per month. That equals 0.167 GB/day. 86400 seconds in a day means that 0.167/86400 = 0.00000193287037 which means divided up between 10GB/s ... check my math but that means that one system is able to monitor:
5173652.695602137 Users/Second on average.

Note: Keep in mind there are peak hours, if we're talking just America. So while the quoted says millions, it could be true that we're talking exponentially more during off-hours.

With some of the capabilities mentioned and new data mining tools developing they are going to have a lot of power in understanding many of the relationships going on around the country, maybe the world. I know there are already a few of these sites around the world and pretty much everything has redundant backups once it gets into cyberspace. Hard to say the exact responsibilities and functions undertaken, but generally snooping and trying to understand just what is going. It is the regulations, procedures and implementation that is the main concern with these large data processing centres. With great power comes great responsibility. Used responsibly they will be a great tool in fighting crime as there are many challenges with the law and capability keeping up with technology. Used improperly and they will destroy the nation as blackmail, fraud and corruption runs rampant.

interesting new command and control, with environmental stability -- after shtf bunker?
wonder how quickly this will emerge ... i'm guessing it'll be functional by May 2011.
guess JVs Theory may be right after all. No wonder tptb had the Police State episode removed.

all for the benefit of the american people. somewhere to store all your data and conversations.

I would guess the real terrorists or dealers don't risk using digital communications for anything important.
- word of mouth; - cryptic postcards; - drop points, etc.

Soon it will be time for the conspiracy sites to start up the printers and do flyers using snail mail again.
Anyone got an invention/idea for an envelope that's tamper proof, or shows a color change panel when opened?

Gee, only $1,000 per square foot, What a bargain. Most commercial construction is done for 2 or 300 dollars psf.
It looks like this thing will be self-sufficient and include a paramilitary security force.
And all this is for what?
As previously said real terrorists wouldn't risk using digital communications anymore.
Another government boondoggle but I'm sure Idaho will be happy for the jobs (which will be done by Mexicans, of course)

Spending $1.2 billion to protect a nation drowning in debt. Great logic there NSA. Bravo you ****ing idiots.

It's amazing what people will do when they are scared isn't it? There is literally no end in sight to the depths they will sink to.

great thread OP, and great comments so far.

maybe this should also be posted in this section of the site:
A51 and other Facilities
www.abovetopsecret.com...

my bet is that it is going to be used for other purposes as well as data. seems an awfully big and expensive space ......has a feel of a COG facility to me,

snoopyuk

Great post.

Just because of the pricetag I immediately thought about apple's billion dollar data center in North Carolina.
There isn't any information about the equipment being used, but the dimensions of the place are huge....

"...The Apple data center in Maiden features a one-story data center floor spanning 184,814 of space, according to a property assessment from Catawba County (link via MacRumors). The central server area is enclosed by 262,328 square feet of space supporting mechanical and electrical systems to support power and cooling. The building also has 57,432 square feet of space for offices and loading docks, and has an exterior equipment yard that covers 141,806 square feet. The building’s height ranges from 24 to 38 feet....."

www.datacenterknowledge.com...


I always wonder the extent of corporate and intelligence interaction, especially amongst companies that might serve the intelligence community quite well. You know like google say (why did they skate on that wifi data-mining thing? Yeah, I know they're loaded, but I'm just pondering... ).

The capabilities of the technology in use today are hard to comprehend, for me at least. It used to be valid to say "they can't watch EVERYone, and besides, why do they care about little old me?" or something of the sort. Now they CAN watch everyone, and watch little old you? Why not?! Scary times, I say.

I only have to say one thing...

With all the government surveillance threads popping up in the last few days I thought I'd remind people about this, as if you've forgotten...

"Bumpity bump", he said.