NSA $2 billion Utah-based facility can process yottabytes of information
March 17, 2012
The National Security Agency (NSA)
is gearing up to spy on American using ‘dumb’ home appliances i.e.
refrigerators, ovens and lighting systems which are connected to the
Internet.
In fact the NSA is already building a gigantic supercomputer to process a gigantic amount of information. It’s a $2 billion Utah-based facility that can process yottabytes (a quadrillion gigabytes) of data, according to the Gizmondo technology blog.
HOW BIG IS A YOTTABYTE - BIGGER THAN YOU CAN EVEN IMAGINE!
The yottabyte (derived from the SI prefix yotta-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one septillion (one long scale quadrillion or 1024) bytes (one quadrillion gigabytes). The unit symbol for the yottabyte is YB.
As of 2011, no storage system has achieved one zettabyte of information. The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world does not amount to even one yottabyte, but was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006. As of 2009, the entire Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes.When used with byte multiples, the SI prefix indicates a power of 1000:
It will be the centerpiece for something called the Global Information Grid and is set to go live in September 2013.
The NSA maintains that the “data center”, to be completed by September 2013, is a component of the “Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative”.
The facility is to provide technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security, collect intelligence on cyber threats and carry out cyber-security objectives, reported Reuters.
But both ordinary Americans and their intelligence community were quick to dub it “a spy center.”
“It will basically monitor everything phone calls, text messages, emails, parking tickets, public records, employment, taxes, power usage, utility records, bank accounts”, says Jill Dyson of Charlotte, N.C. the author of various classified reports on the NSA for the Occupy Charlotte Movement.
“This is more than just a data center,” an official source close to the project told the online magazine Wired.com. The source says the center will actually focus on deciphering the accumulated data, essentially code-breaking. This means not only exposing Facebook activities or Wikipedia requests, but compromising “the invisible” Internet, or the “deepnet.” Legal and business deals, financial transactions, password-protected files and inter-governmental communications will all become vulnerable.
“It is the next generation of domestic spying”, says Paul Queen of Charlotte. “Once communication data is stored, data-mining can begin. That is when control will happen”, he said.
Wired.com puts it.this way: ““the most covert and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.”
The spy center will simply collect all the data there is to be collected.
Virtually, no one can escape the new surveillance, created in the US for the War on Terror.
Some data, of course, would be crucial in the anti-terrorism battle: exposing potential adversaries. The question is how the NSA defines who is and who is not a potential adversary.
EVERYONE IS A TARGET
“Everybody is a target; everybody with communication is a target,” remarks another source close to the Utah project.
According to Russian media sources the data storage in Utah, with its 1 million square feet of enclosed space, is “virtually bottomless”, given that a terabyte can now be stored on a tiny flash drive. Now image a 240 acre facility and you can get a scope of how much information can be stored at the Utah facility.
BUGGING THEMSELVES
CIA Chief David Petraeus admitted, with a smile recently, speaking at speaking at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA front venture capital firm, that Americans were effectively “bugging themselves and making it easy for spy agencies to peek in on their lives”.
TRANSFORMATIONAL
“Transformational’ is an overused word”, he said “but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies, particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft,” Petraeus noted.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY AROUND YOUR REFRIGERATOR?
“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus explained. “The latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”
Robert Tilford
Charlotte, N.C.
In fact the NSA is already building a gigantic supercomputer to process a gigantic amount of information. It’s a $2 billion Utah-based facility that can process yottabytes (a quadrillion gigabytes) of data, according to the Gizmondo technology blog.
HOW BIG IS A YOTTABYTE - BIGGER THAN YOU CAN EVEN IMAGINE!
The yottabyte (derived from the SI prefix yotta-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one septillion (one long scale quadrillion or 1024) bytes (one quadrillion gigabytes). The unit symbol for the yottabyte is YB.
As of 2011, no storage system has achieved one zettabyte of information. The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world does not amount to even one yottabyte, but was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006. As of 2009, the entire Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes.When used with byte multiples, the SI prefix indicates a power of 1000:
- 1000000000000000000000000bytes = 10008 or 1024 bytes
It will be the centerpiece for something called the Global Information Grid and is set to go live in September 2013.
The NSA maintains that the “data center”, to be completed by September 2013, is a component of the “Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative”.
The facility is to provide technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security, collect intelligence on cyber threats and carry out cyber-security objectives, reported Reuters.
But both ordinary Americans and their intelligence community were quick to dub it “a spy center.”
“It will basically monitor everything phone calls, text messages, emails, parking tickets, public records, employment, taxes, power usage, utility records, bank accounts”, says Jill Dyson of Charlotte, N.C. the author of various classified reports on the NSA for the Occupy Charlotte Movement.
“This is more than just a data center,” an official source close to the project told the online magazine Wired.com. The source says the center will actually focus on deciphering the accumulated data, essentially code-breaking. This means not only exposing Facebook activities or Wikipedia requests, but compromising “the invisible” Internet, or the “deepnet.” Legal and business deals, financial transactions, password-protected files and inter-governmental communications will all become vulnerable.
“It is the next generation of domestic spying”, says Paul Queen of Charlotte. “Once communication data is stored, data-mining can begin. That is when control will happen”, he said.
Wired.com puts it.this way: ““the most covert and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.”
The spy center will simply collect all the data there is to be collected.
Virtually, no one can escape the new surveillance, created in the US for the War on Terror.
Some data, of course, would be crucial in the anti-terrorism battle: exposing potential adversaries. The question is how the NSA defines who is and who is not a potential adversary.
EVERYONE IS A TARGET
“Everybody is a target; everybody with communication is a target,” remarks another source close to the Utah project.
According to Russian media sources the data storage in Utah, with its 1 million square feet of enclosed space, is “virtually bottomless”, given that a terabyte can now be stored on a tiny flash drive. Now image a 240 acre facility and you can get a scope of how much information can be stored at the Utah facility.
BUGGING THEMSELVES
CIA Chief David Petraeus admitted, with a smile recently, speaking at speaking at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA front venture capital firm, that Americans were effectively “bugging themselves and making it easy for spy agencies to peek in on their lives”.
TRANSFORMATIONAL
“Transformational’ is an overused word”, he said “but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies, particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft,” Petraeus noted.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY AROUND YOUR REFRIGERATOR?
“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus explained. “The latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”
Robert Tilford
Charlotte, N.C.
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