NSA Building $860 Million Data Center In Maryland

1sockchuck writes "As its current data collection makes headlines, the National Security Agency is continuing to expand its data storage and processing capabilities. The agency recently broke ground on an $860 million data center at Fort Meade, Maryland that will span more than 600,000 square feet. The project will provide additional IT capacity beyond the NSA's controversial Utah data center. The new facility will be supported by 60 megawatts of power and use both air-cooled and liquid-cooled equipment."

sequester jester

[OffTheLip]

Cry me a river. Regardless of how much lip service is given to the current fiscal pain the gov is shouldering there is always a revenue source for pet projects and nothing returned to their source of funds (us taxpayers).

Re:Fixing the problem

[Trepidity]

A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.

In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.

Re:Fixing the problem

[turp182]

The Uniparty system we are under is the problem, so swaying the vote would be ineffective. The Repubs and Dems are basically the same, at least when it comes to power and surveillance. Both parties like the power. And abuse it.

  The problem is getting access to high level elections, and coalescing people on a third party. It is a difficult problem.

Re:Come on american patriots

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter what you had in mind, you would only encourage more of this sort of thing.

The problem is much, much larger than a data center. It isn't even confined to the federal government. The problem is a complacent populace, which includes me and you, unless you're actually outraged enough to take some time off work and protest. I know I can't afford that shit.

And that's the real problem. We're geeks who generally care about stuff like privacy, whereas the general populace is on Facebook. But even we're not getting off our asses to do anything. Hell, even here, Richard Stallman and Julian Assange are more often than not ridiculed and slandered.

Re:but no unemployment for displaced workers

[Sponge Bath]

Unemployed workers have no lobbyists. The security industry does.

Re:$860 Million

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"logging machine"...

On the contrary, the NSA has some great minds working for them, and they are probably doing some very interesting and useful analysis with all that data. The problem is, what great minds create, can be misused by others.

All this power is supposed to be used to catch terrorists. But now that this database is out in the open, a lot of other folks will find reasons why they must also have access to it.

Think of a simple police detective at the scene of a murder interviewing potential witnesses and suspects. He could immediately get a topology drawn of who knows who, and which ones have been chatting a lot with each other. Usually the poor policeman needs to do a lot of grunt and foot work to map this out. And get warrants for phone records. This would really help his investigation a lot.

But do we really want data collected this way to be used that way . . . ? What will prevent a slippery slide of more and more agencies and organizations getting access to this data for their own purposes . . . ? Can the DEA escalate their war on drugs to also be a matter of national security? This info could also help the IRS track down money launderers as well . . . how about the IRS . . . ?

Now that the government has this "Critical Tool" at their disposal, the more important question is not how can it be used, but how it should not be used.

Where does the money come from?

[OhANameWhatName]

I thought that the US was in debt so far that they're defaulting on the bonds they sold to China? And the government has 860 million to throw around just to find out where their citizens are eating lunch?

It's amazing that this data centre is worth more to the US government that financial liquidity.