NSA Is Building a New Datacenter In San Antonio 119
An anonymous reader writes in with an article from a Texas paper on the NSA's new facility in San Antonio. "America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters... where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency's mission to identify terrorist threats. ... [Author James] Bamford writes about how NSA and Microsoft had both been eyeing San Antonio for years because it has the cheapest electricity in Texas, and the state has its own power grid, making it less vulnerable to power outages on the national grid. He notes that it seemed the NSA wanted assurance Microsoft would be here, too, before making a final commitment, due to the advantages of 'having their miners virtually next door to the mother lode of data centers.' The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size. Bamford says that under current law, NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable." The article mentions the NRC report concluding that data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism, which we discussed a couple of months back.
Terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article mentions the NRC report concluding that data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism
Anyone wanna bet that Obama won't do a damn thing about these obvious attempts to spy on American citizens?
It won't be shut down because there's no outcry (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe he ignores it, maybe not, but it sure is an interesting shift in presidential policy to actually bother setting such a thing up.
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Stopping some of the bizzare bits of security theatre is another thing. Stopping situations where security theatre has been used as an excuse to expand intelligence gathering into areas where it previously didn't go is yet another thing and would probably take a few administrations to find and stop. Think of Kennedy and the FBI and CIA of the time that w
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At the moment there are scams where government money is spent to shift stuff to Iraq but the contractors then ship it the Syria to sell it.
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I think it will take a few terms of both Democrat and Republican Presidents to undo the damage.
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I see. So what you're saying is that the one hand pushes us 5 toward authoritarianism and the other pulls us back 2 or 3. It seems to me that this has been going on since the 60s, or earlier. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of this arrangement, and would feel foolish for cheerleading the 2 steps back portion of the dance now that the pattern has been established so thoroughly.
If, once in my life, I saw 6 steps taken back, I'd perhaps begin to cheer again.
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America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters
Sorry in advance, but I went ahead and read (some of) the article. Anyway, I'm having trouble believing for sure that this facility is a datacenter. Considering it's located at the site of a previous chip fab, it makes sense to me that it would stay a chip fab.
The only source that says this will be used for datamining isn't even the article author, but rather the author of a book who hasn't worked for the NSA for 25 years. These are quotes from this book:
No longer able to store all the intercepted phone calls and e-mail in its secret city, the agency has now built a new data warehouse in San Antonio, Texas," writes author James Bamford in the Shadow Factory, his third book about the NSA. "Costing, with renovations, upwards of $130 million, the 470,000-square-foot facility will be almost the size of the Alamodome. Considering how much data can now be squeezed onto a small flash drive, the new NSA building may eventually be able to hold all the information in the world."
So just what will be going on inside the NSA's new San Antonio facility? Bamford describes former NSA Director Mike Hayden's goals for the data-mining center as knowing "exactly what Americans were doing day by day, hour by hour, and second by second. He wanted to know where they shopped, what they bought, what movies they saw, what books they read, the toll booths they went through, the plane tickets they purchased, the hotels they stayed in... In other words, Total Information Awareness, the same Orwellian concept ...
The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size. Bamford says that under current law, NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable.
What the Microsoft people will have will be just storage of a lot of the email that is being sent. They keep this email -- I don't know why -- and there should be some legislation saying how long it should be kept," said Bamford in a phone interview last week. "The post office doesn't keep copies of our letters when we mail letters; why should the telecom companies or the internet providers keep copies of our email? It doesn't make sense to me.
That's a big wall of quot
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Given the history and function of the the NSA, it probably isn't going to be doing data mining, or anything else that they actually SAY it's going to be doing.
How's this for paranoia:
It's likely that the NSA cut a deal with Microsoft decades ago to allow a back door into any system running MS products. The Chinese now manufacture most of the computer hardware and are working to include hardware based, OS-independent back doors into as many systems as they can. Since a back door built into a chip is almost
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damn you... where is my tinfoil hat. who knows how to make a Faraday cage.
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very easy, but you have to use raw materials you personally acquire from local sources, weld them together in a large sphere in a tight grid pattern and to close the shape you'll have to finish the welding from inside. Best to complete the welding in complete silence away from any observers in a location that will remain secret.
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Clever plot but I do believe you're wrong.
Yes, the Chinese [wikipedia.org] certainly make a lot of computer hardware, but those aren't quite the chinese you were thinking of. Not to mention the Thai, the Singaporians, the Germans, even the French and the Americans who do also manufacture a lot of your computer parts.
A backdoor for the NSA in microsoft products is not unfathomable; if they were determined they'd do it. Then again, SELinux is funded by the NSA, so I don't quite know how that all fits in...
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Since SELinux was developed by the NSA, it has to have backdoors.
But it's open source and part of Linux, so it must be airtight.
*head explode*
(Maybe generalities are bad?)
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data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism
Don't be silly. Everyone knows terrorists don't use encryption..
Re:Terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about terrorism.
This is about catching other types of criminals like people distributing images of child sex, people discussing marijuana growing, people discussing anti-government ideas (i.e. like the LP), and so on. It's a way to circumvent the Constitution's requirement for a search warrant.
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How about this: for every new monitoring scheme they setup they repeal a whole bunch of useless or minor laws. Presumably you'd want them repealing enough laws that very quickly they'd have to make fundamental choices about what to repeal or to stop monitoring and reach a sort of equilibreum.
A stupid pipe dream I know, bringing sanity into the world is frowned upon.
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Even better would be to require that all laws have sunset clauses, and can't be re-upped more than 30 days before they are to expire.
Ask ELIOT SPITZER if they're spying on us.... (Score:2)
A political enemy, phone records, bank records and a SQL query.
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I don't think that the data mining will be dedicated on spying american citizens, since NSA is probably trying to spy the whole world electronically. ;-)
Of course, american citizens will be the first victims, as usual.
And this is called 'beta-testers' in Microsoft terminology
Re:Terrorism? (Score:4, Insightful)
I find your paranoia (and that of many other Slashdotters) interesting. Why are so many Americans so certain that everything their government does is an attempt to oppress them? NSA's mission is foreign intelligence. That means that most of what they do is about spying on people who are not American citizens. Believe it or not, the world out here is really quite big. Did you know that there are actually more non-Americans than Americans on the Internet? There's plenty of non-American data for NSA to mine, if data mining is what they want to do.
You are not the centre of the universe. You are not the only thing your government cares about. You are not being spied on with satellite mind-control rays. Get over yourselves and drop the conspiracy crap, please.
Or, you know, go and collect loads of guns and hole yourself up in a log cabin in the mountains while you wait for the Rapture. They can't eavesdrop on your communications if you're only communicating with the Lord!
(Oh noes! I have disagreed with teh groupthink! Negative mods coming in 3... 2... 1...)
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"Why are so many Canadians so certain that everything their government does is an attempt to oppress them?"
"Why are so many Brits so certain that everything their government does is an attempt to oppress them?"
"Why are so many Aussies so certain that everything their government does is an attempt to oppress them?"
"Why are so many
Because they swap data, personally that hardly makes me ce
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...given that there is so much NON American data out there, and this country is reeling from a collapsing economy, it might be more cost effective to spy domestically for foreign threats. Some of the more effective acts of terror were committed by people RIGHT HERE AT HOME, occasionally with foreign financing. No, we're not the center of the universe, and because we are not, it is cheaper for our government to violate our civil rights within our borders in order to increase our perception of "security". Any
If anyone claims to care about this at all... (Score:3, Interesting)
...they would do good to read at least this portion of a speech by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell [dni.gov] at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government just last week.
I find it interesting that the linked "article" is actually an opinion piece from an "alternative newsweekly". It makes a lot of assumptions and unwarranted logical leaps; long on paranoia and short on facts. In any event, here's bit of history, with the important parts in bold. I doubt many people will be interested in what the leaders
Re:If anyone claims to care about this at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What engineers?
Engineers like Mark Klein, who, by their statements, also clearly have a political agenda?
Engineers like Mark Klein, who have no direct knowledge of the implementation of the surveillance equipment?
Perhaps you could tell me how a system would work to "intercept" internet traffic which is lawful to intercept without being able to examine the "wrapper" of each packet.
You can't. And no, the answer isn't, "Well, that's NSA's problem, and right now they're violating the law." This isn't the answer
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That's an impressive response. Almost half your response is a straw man though, as I never made any statements about foreign surveillance. I never objected to foreign surveillance, just domestic surveillance which doesn't meet warrant requirements. So basically our only disagreement is where that requirement begins.
I don't care whether Mr. Klein knows the workings of the NSA equipment or not. And neither should you. As testified, all communication is being routed through the equipment. Refute that. Don't
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The trouble, of course, is what it means to "intercept". If "intercept" simply means "passes through any equipment even if the meaningful, contextual content of excluded traffic is never read, analyzed, searched, or stored in any way", then yes, all traffic under such provisions is being "intercepted". Except that's not what intercepted means in a legal context. By that same logic, since any telephone company has the technical capability to tap any phone number for a law enforcement entity, they are, in effect, "tapping" all of them.
That is not the same logic at all. The difference between passing communications on phone company wires, and recording communications in NSA data warehouses for possible later analysis, just in case, is obvious and pertinent.
Sure, you can argue that this is government equipment, and that you don't know what it's doing.
No, you can't see what it's doing, nor can any court (save, perhaps, FISC); that would disable the entire notion of secret foreign intelligence collection (which does not require, and never has required, court oversight when US Persons are not involved). That's where Congressional intelligence oversight comes in, and that's the whole purpose of it being there. Intelligence is a difficult balance in a free and open society.
What's difficult to balance? Al Qaida didn't just learn that we'd like to intercept their phone calls because the New York Times ran a story that the NSA, under the direction of the Bush administration, was breaking federal law. Just what tactical advantage to terrorists supposedly o
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NSA's mission is foreign intelligence.
Then explain this: AT&T's Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens [wired.com].
Re:Terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
'Why are so many Americans so certain that everything their government does is an attempt to oppress them? '
Six thousand years of historical evidence about governments.
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Exactly. If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
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Get over yourselves and drop the conspiracy crap, please.
Yeah, you are right, there are no examples of governments oppressing its citizens in history. What was I thinking!? Thanks for waking me up.
Or, you know, go and collect loads of guns
Jealous?
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Why would he? I am sure it is a great idea now that he will be President and the Democrats have a majority in congress:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/04/feinstein/ [salon.com]
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I'm quite the fan of Linux myself and have been using it for years, but I fail to see how it's going to stop the NSA from spying on internet traffic...
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I'm sure there's a distro for that.
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Yes, but it's produced by the NSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux [wikipedia.org]
SaaS? (Score:5, Insightful)
If any business needs yet another reason to stay away from SaaS, this is the one to pay attention to.
Businesses and their IP are becoming increasingly important. Any time your business IP crosses onto someone elses network, it's susceptible to snooping either by corporate espionage or now government eyes.
If your company has a market advantage caused by proprietary information, SaaS is not for you. Why else would the NSA be shacking up next to a Microsoft data center?
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And what exactly would the NSA do with your company's proprietary information that would hurt your market advantage?
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I wouldn't be too concerned with your business-confidential data leaking into the private sector via some unscrupulous NSA employee (who have a higher bar to employment I would hope, than say a TSA employee).
I'm much more concerned about the NSA collecting data about foreign nationals who happen to be using whichever SaaS app they happen to be snooping, and that's ontop of all the feature creep that could end up being used to abuse US citizens.
Re:SaaS? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't be too concerned with your business-confidential data leaking into the private sector via some unscrupulous NSA employee (who have a higher bar to employment I would hope, than say a TSA employee).
"Rogue" agents are not the problem. Sanctioned industrial espionage is the problem.
In theory they only do it against foreign corporations, but as multinationals become the norm, that line is becoming increasingly less meaningful. The ultimate result of such policies is likely to be spying against the competitors of the currently favored multinationals.
Here's one article about how Echelon was used for industrial espionage [indianexpress.com] - there are plenty more about the NSA and other agencies that are not Echelon-specific either.
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"Rogue" agents are not the problem. Sanctioned industrial espionage is the problem
You got that right. Here is another "small" example - to the tune of 6 billion, with a 1.3 billion side show - all old news:
July 11, 2001: European Parliament Report: Echelon Data Provided to US Corporations
Glyn Ford.Glyn Ford. [Source: British Labour Party]The European Parliament releases its final report on its findings about the secretive US surveillance program known as Echelon. The report, two years in the making, exhaustively details many of Echelon's surveillance capabilities, and lists many of Echel
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This may or may not be relevant but government personnel have a really cavalier attitude towards corporate IP. It's an extension of how they look down upon the vendors and contractors who actually make most government operations "work." I recently had a customer get pretty ugly when I refused to give him software he hadn't licensed (just because I can get license-free versions of anything my company produces)...they expect "hookups" all the time, and you just know they will throw that shit up on the torre
Re:SaaS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any time your business IP crosses onto someone elses network, it's susceptible to snooping either by corporate espionage or now government eyes.
I'm not sure your business critical data is the real risk. Like a lot of things, it's the unintended consequences that may have bigger implications. If other countries are afraid of communications flowing through US relays being monitored, whether that fear is legitimate or not, they may be tempted to utilize more advanced encryptions schemes or develop relays that don't route through the US.
Sort of like the laptop confiscations by TSA. Some companies stopped coming here to do business. That probably wasn't the only reason, but for a few it was the last straw. Those that did come were sudden converts to advanced encryption and off-site file storage.
I think there's a certain level of trust that used to be there that the US could be trusted with your data because no one could access it without a warrant. Probably not the protection they imagined but still a reasonable assurance. Take that away and nothing really separates us from the most heavy-handed and tyrannical governments on the planet.
Ultimately, I think that's the greatest blow to the US from the 6 years of right wing rule. The realization that another Bush could rise up and trample on our ideals and flout the law with little real consequence and even get enthusiastic support from a substantial minority of the population. Suddenly nothing is beneath us. Spying on friend and foe alike, unilateral military action, seizure of bank funds and property without due process, indefinite imprisonment without access to a lawyer, torture, racial profiling...nothing is out of bounds if we feel the justification is there. We can no longer be trusted to respect the rule of law. A perception we have, unfortunately, worked hard to deserve.
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The realization that another Bush could rise up and trample on our ideals and flout the law with little real consequence and even get enthusiastic support from a substantial minority of the population.
Substantial minority? You mean a 50.001% minority? (Or a 49.999% minority if you thought Gore should have won?) For most of his time in office Bush had a great deal of the country behind him (just maybe not your circle of friends).
The thing that scares me about Bush is that a MAJORITY of Americans supporte
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The problem is that the majority of Americans believe in authoritarian government. They might disagree as to some details of policy that this government should enact, but just about everybody agrees that it shouldn't be up to people to run their own lives.
A lot of us had pretty vague ideas about how a lot of things, including government, ought to work. I'm optimistic about the likelihood of general understanding and appreciation of civics to improve at an accelerated pace, once the alcoholic in the Oval Office is replaced by the Constitutional law scholar.
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Uh, sure. Just like the last Rhodes scholar educated the populace so well that we ended up with Republican control of both houses and the executive branch? :)
Obama isn't really raising my hopes much. I'd love to be wrong, but I've my share of American political "revolutions" to know better...
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I'm not sure your business critical data is the real risk.
Normally, that structure implies that you believe the opposite, an assumption that I do not believe is reasonable. Consider the Bush administration's recent, blatant preferential treatment toward businesses which, paraphrasing Michael Moore, acquire money purely by already having money, producing nothing. Contrast Bernanke's and Paulson's, "emergency relief" largesse to the financial professions against their absolute refusal to loan 1/10th what AIG has already received, to save 3 million automobile manuf
Odd? (Score:1)
America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters - oddly positioned directly across the street from a 24-hour Walmart - where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency's mission to identify terrorist threats.
Keep your friends close, and your Walmarts closer.
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i see this is the new "MSA" they've been talking about
Not the CIC [wikipedia.org]?
This is why (Score:2, Insightful)
The US will never do anything to dislodge Microsoft from the throne. The intelligence value of having Microsoft products in a monopolistic position all over the world is far too important. You don't squander that just to please some customer rights hippies at home.
Microsoft is the mother lode? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have thought being near a Google data center would be more valuable, with the huge amount of traffic, and the indexing that comes through Google.
Maybe Google has better practices in terms of security of their data centers?
Re:Microsoft is the mother lode? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Google has better practices in terms of security of their data centers?
Well, for starters, they're not running Windows...
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More importantly (Score:1, Interesting)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
MSIE getting a button on the toolbar that says "Report as Terrorist site"
And MSN Hotmail getting a new link next to contacts that says "report contact as terrorist.
Also, the list of possible threat sources was just expanded to include slashdot.
Rumor has it that certain editors of slashdot and other blogs may be conducting attacks against various industry players by linking to them ( something the terrorists call "Slashdotting" the victim site)
odd place for NSA (Score:4, Interesting)
Sony wasn't there that long. They got it from AMD. Anway, the NSA has been "moving in" for more than a year. It was almost a fort before, and it certainly is now. They even taken over the public road that ran to its north. I'm on the hill, about a mile northwest of there, and can see and hear it at night. It's also close to the Southwest Research Institute (they did the Columbia wing test that demonstrated the hole could be caused by the foam insulation), which is on the other side of Loop 410. I'm sort of surprised they moved in there, though. Lots of better places farther out. San Antonio used to have five military bases: Fort Sam Houston, Lackland AFB, Kelly AFB, and the smaller Brooks field, and Randolf AFB (nearby). Kelly and Brooks are gone. AT&T used to be headquartered here but most of it moved to Dallas earlier this year (think of room 614a). Mm, maybe that's why AT&T left - NSA was moving in.
Movie and series rights (Score:2)
Movie rights.
There's got to be a series in that too.
There's too much officialdom going on and it warrants an expose of some sort.
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I was Googling to see if other company HQs of interest were in the area and came across the AT&T one. It seems that the major pipe AT&T was probably using before wouldn't be too hard to be had. Seemed the timing a bit too convenient.
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I'm gonna piggy back on your post since your a fellow resident from SA. :)
I can't believe the paranoia based on a college kids report in the local flea rag? Come on. The SA Current is is local college rag, they advertise current events, gay clubs, have the worst food critics, and have the most left learning articles this side of San Francisco. The first paragraph in the article is total BS, there are either no NSA employees or a skeleton crew at that facility. Its still under construction, and I highly doub
Yipes! (Score:1)
MS and NSA partnering over domestic spying WOPR? [wikipedia.org]
If that doesn't make the hair on the back of your head stand up like a soldier on Viagra, nothing will.
Plus, most such efforts so far are nothing but money pits [wired.com].
Always (Score:2)
The good news is that this datacenter is just ONE of their many. I am surprised that this news got out.
The Laws of Conservation (Score:3, Funny)
The Center should open about the time Bush moves back to Texas, so the Law of Conservation of Intelligence will hold.
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This is called "democracy":
If you think the government is doing the wrong thing, then it is your duty as a citizen to stand up in public and explain why. If you make a persuasive argument, then other peop
The statement that the NSA could "access" (Score:5, Insightful)
which all adds up to yet another reason to boycott Microsoft and use Linux or OS X, and Open Source business software.
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Type II error (Score:1, Informative)
Of COURSE data mining is ineffective.
Consider the following analogy. A company creates a test that is 99.9% accurate to detect a rare genetic disease. 1 person in 10,000 has the disease.
Let's say your test comes back positive. You should be worried, right? I mean, 99.9% accuracy, and you came back positive.
Actually, no. Let's say you test 1,000,000 people. Of those, 100 will actually have the disease, and 999,900 will not. With 99.9% accuracy, you'll see:
* Of the 999,900 people who do NOT have the di
Underground railroad communications. (Score:5, Interesting)
During the civil war the slaves developed a method of communication that went unnoticed except by those who knew about it.
They would sing song in the fields that woudl help to spread the word regarding teh undrground railroad.
Today common conversation communication can as well be used where there really is not anything to decipher.
Language and its abstraction work by attaching meaning and only work as well as the argeed upon meaning by those using teh abstraction.
It doesn't matter what meaning is attached so long as those using it understand what is being communicated
Everyone has heard of double speak, where what is communicated is meant to be perceived by the public one way but internally the very same words mean the opposite of what the public perceives. and this is just one example.
There is a saying, "locks as for honest people" meaning here if some dishonest group wanted to communicate without concern for NSA data mining, they could do so easily.
However, considering the massive amounts of data that is transfered from voice to digital on a daily or hourly basis and what the limits we have in computing power, its simple not possible to data mine for the terrorist threats from terrorists who want to avoid exposure and use such common conversation meaning dishonesty.
But it is very possible, very probable, and very reliable that such data mining be used to determine the attitudes of mass population mindsets and mindsets of population sections as well as spying on targeted US citizens that might influence such population in a direction counter to the "why determine the populations mindset and changes in it?" The unsuspecting American public is so easily influenced by the media so by knowing the overall attitudes of the American public and using the media to influence American attitudes, you have a feedback loop of CONTROL.
To properly address terrorist threats is to simply remove the reasons any terrorist group could play off of, that they won't be able to gain a following.
The World Trade Center was attacked on two different dates. The NSA had to know it was a target and why.
It was because of the effects of the trillion dollar bet [pbs.org] in south East Asia. Even Ted Turner publicly said 9/11 was an act of desperation and he'd know because his CNN News did a story on the effects as did also ABC. Follow the Money is the reality here.
This was avoidable but caused by greed. And on the other hand there is What The World Wants [unesco.org] that shows that we do have the manpower, knowledge and not only the natural resources but the finances to remove reasons for terrorists to gain a following. And even more important, the question of: Why is this not being done?
Given the death and torture imposed upon innocent people during the Spanish inquisition and the fact Galileo was exonerated so very very late (1992 where it only really was to serve the church not this innocent but long dead person) and the fact that Indonesia by CIA records is 88% Muslim, its clear that religion is an excuse both ways. An excuse to use by the bad, be the bad being believers or non-believers. But 9/11 was about money, wrongful World Stock Market manipulations backed by political controlled military, hence the Pentagon and probable White house targets. It was about money not religion, regardless of what you call such evil dishonesty as happened in the stock market.
But if you wanted to get a very accurate view of the general population attitudes for such a media feedback loop of CONTROL , then what the NSA is doing with data mining will clearly work.
Paranoia will destroy-ya (Score:1)
Construction on the new NSA facility (old Sony bldg) started long before MS had finalized work to build the data center in San Antonio. The two are not related in anything other than the fact that they are both in San Antonio; it's not like they can walk over to MS Datacenter with a thumb drive and ask for all their data. It's _just_ a datacenter; coordination between MS and NSA would likely happen in Washington or Redmond.
There are other datacenters in the Westover Hills part of San Antonio; Lowes (or Ho
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So, for all the conspiracy theory fanatics out there. It comes down to the all-mighty dollar, not some nefarious deed
So, in your mind, dollars rule out nefarious deeds. that's [cato.org] stupid. [corpwatch.org]
... to spy on your daily surfing and email habits....unless of course your are a child predator, drug dealer, human trafficker, organized crime-lord, etc.
Yes, well, the problem is that to be accurate you would have to also let "etc" = 100% legal statuses including political opponent, personal rival, and superior inventor, especially in a field with government-sponsored monopolies like telecomms and passenger transportation. Yes, government-sponsored monopolies, in the form of exclusive telecomms franchises and direct subsidies to oil companies, and farm corporations to burn food, are all hi
This seems awfully familiar (Score:2)
Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office [wikipedia.org]
Remember that little spat over the Total Information Awareness project back in 2001? You know, the one where after a lot of public pressure Congress tried to de-fund the program?
Well, gee... (Score:2)
Thanks NSA, for giving us the irrefutable evidence that, indeed, Microsoft is DIRECTLY involved in spying on America.
Spend your dollars wisely, America. Getting(and keeping) Microsoft OFF your computer, entirely, now directly equates to keeping the NSA off it as well.
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So proximity to a satellite office of Microsoft is irrefutable evidence? Do you think that if the NSA wanted on your computer that doing it with any other OS would be that big of challenge?
Come one, you can do better than that. Ask yourself why the NSA would care about your computer? Doing something illegal? No, then they don't care about you. Yes, well, you may have to take your medicine.
TimeOut
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Guess what? (Score:2)
Microsoft will even pay for the fiber optic cable if the NSA will share the intel with them, so they can rip their customers off even more than they do.
They already let the NSA try to break Vista when it was being developed - meaning that the NSA probably found ten ways to break into Vista machines, then shared seven of them with Microsoft and kept the other three to themselves.
If you use Vista, you're wide open to the NSA.
What difference does closing Guantanamo make? (Score:2)
What will Obama do with the prisoners? Answer: turn them over to military prisons in the US - where they'll get the exact same treatment they got in Guantanamo.
Or he'll turn them over to the US Bureau of Prisons - where they'll get the exact same treatment they got in Guantanamo - just like US prisoners do.
Where do you think all these brutal methods were developed - in US prisons. Most of the people involved in the Iraq Abu Ghraib abuses were US correctional officers. The Iraqi prison system was developed b
NSA didn't follow Microsoft, it was there first. (Score:2)
The other mother lode of data centers (Score:2)
due to the advantages of 'having their miners virtually next door to the mother lode of data centers.' The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size.
They forgot to mention the other mother lode of data centers. [rackspace.com]
Also, San Antonio has a lot of IT people with security clearances, which may also be useful for them.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean a decades-old pearl of wisdom attributed to MINIX creator Andy Tanenbaum? [webperform...atters.com]