Utah Data Center

The Utah Data Center, Bluffdale, Utah (United States).

The Utah Data Center will gather data from intercepted satellite communications and underwater ocean cables. Analysts will decipher, analyse and store the information in order to spot potential national security threats. The facility will be heavily fortified with backup generators and powerful equipment to keep the vast computer network cool.

The Utah Data Center, also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center,^[1] is a data storage facility for the United States Intelligence Community that is designed to store extremely large amounts of data, estimated to be on the order of exabytes or higher.^[2] Its purpose is to support the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), though its precise mission is classified.^[3] The National Security Agency (NSA), which will lead operations at the facility, is the executive agent for the Director of National Intelligence.^[4] It is located at Camp Williams, near Bluffdale, Utah, between Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake, on the boundary line between Salt Lake County and Utah County to the south.

The megaproject was completed in late-2013 at a cost of US$1.5 billion despite ongoing controversy over the NSA's involvement in the practice of mass surveillance in the United States. Prompted by the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the Utah Data Center was hailed by The Wall Street Journal as a "symbol of the spy agency's surveillance prowess".^[5]

Purpose

The data center is alleged to be able to process "all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and internet searches, as well as all types of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter'."^[6] In response to claims that the data center would be used to illegally monitor emails of US citizens, in April 2013 an NSA spokesperson said, "Many unfounded allegations have been made about the planned activities of the Utah Data Center, ... one of the biggest misconceptions about NSA is that we are unlawfully listening in on, or reading emails of, US citizens. This is simply not the case."^[4]

In April 2009, officials at the United States Department of Justice acknowledged that the NSA had engaged in large-scale "overcollection" of domestic communications in excess of the federal intelligence court's authority, but claimed that the acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.^[7]

In August 2012, The New York Times published short documentaries by independent filmmakers entitled The Program,^[8] based on interviews with a whistleblower named William Binney. The project had been designed for foreign signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection but, Binney alleged, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, controls that limited unintentional collection of data pertaining to US citizens were removed, prompting concerns by him and others that the actions were illegal and unconstitutional. Binney alleged that the Bluffdale facility was designed to store a broad range of domestic communications for data mining without warrants.^[9]

Documents leaked to the media in June 2013 described PRISM, a national security electronic surveillance program operated by the NSA, as enabling in-depth surveillance on live internet communications and stored information.^[10][11] Reports linked the data center to the NSA's controversial expansion of activities, which store extremely large amounts of data. Privacy and civil liberties advocates raised concerns about the unique capabilities that such a facility would give to intelligence agencies.^[12][13] “They park stuff in storage in the hopes that they will eventually have time to get to it,” said James Lewis, a cyberexpert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “or that they’ll find something that they need to go back and look for in the masses of data.” But, he added, “most of it sits and is never looked at by anyone.” ^[14]

The UDC is expected to store internet data as well as phone records from the controversial NSA call database when it opens in 2013.^[15]

Structure

The planned structure is 1 million or 1.5 million square feet,^[16][17][18] 100,000 square feet of data center space and greater than 900,000 square feet of technical support and administrative space,^[6][16] and it is projected to cost from $1.5 billion^[3][19][20] to $2 billion when finished in September 2013.^[6][16] One report suggested that it will cost another $2 billion for hardware, software, and maintenance.^[16] The completed facility is expected to require 65 megawatts, costing about $40 million per year.^[6][16] The facility is expected to use 1.7 million gallons (6500 tons) of water per day.^[21] An article by Forbes estimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes in the near term, based on analysis of unclassified blueprints, but mentions Moore's Law, meaning that advances in technology could be expected to increase the capacity by orders of magnitude in the coming years.^[2]

See also

• Texas Cryptologic Center
• Big data
• Cyberethics
• Electronic Communications Privacy Act
• FISA Amendments Act of 2008
• PRISM (surveillance program)
• Privacy law
• Secrecy of correspondence
• Electronic Frontier Foundation

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Utah Data Center.

• "James Bamford: Inside the NSA's Largest Secret Domestic Spy Center". 
• "Edward Snowden: NSA Whistleblower". 

v t e National Security Agency Locations AMOC Ft. Meade Friendship Annex Georgia Cryptologic Center KRSOC MRSOC MSOC RAF Menwith Hill Room 641A Rosman Research Station Sugar Grove Yakima Training Center Leaders Ralph Canine John A. Samford Laurence Hugh Frost Gordon Blake Marshall Carter Noel Gayler Samuel C. Phillips Lew Allen Bobby Ray Inman Lincoln D. Faurer William Eldridge Odom Bill Studeman John Michael McConnell Kenneth Minihan Michael Hayden Keith B. Alexander Prominent figures Bernard Ardisana Howard C. Barlow William Blankinship Dorothy T. Blum Benson K. Buffman Lambros D. Callimahos James R. Chiles Mahlon E. Doyle Agnes Meyer Driscoll Thomas H. Dyer Edward A. Everett Lowell K. Frazer Elizebeth S. Friedman William F. Friedman Charles L. Gandy Meredith Gardner Alfred M. Gray Jacob Gurin Robert J. Hermann Sydney Jaffe David Kahn Oliver R. Kirby Richard A. Leibler Solomon Kullback Mitford M. Mathews Juanita Moody John E. Morrison Cecil J. Phillips James W. Pryde Francis Raven Joseph J. Rochefort Howard E. Rosenblum Frank Rowlett Laurance Safford Arthur Salemme Donald M. Showers Abraham Sinkov Samuel S. Snyder Charles C. Tevis John Tiltman Louis W. Tordella Thomas E. Tremain Julia Ward Joseph N. Wenger Norman Wild Herbert O. Yardley Milton Zaslow Operations Central Security Service (CSS) COMINT Information Assurance Remote Operations Center SIGINT Tailored Access Operations (TAO) NSA Threat Operations Center (NTOC) Technology ANT catalog FROSTBURG HARVEST Secure Terminal Equipment (STE) Secure Telephone Unit (STU)-1 STU-II STU-III WARRIOR PRIDE Controversy 2013 mass surveillance disclosures Church Committee Edward Snowden LOVEINT James Bamford NSA warrantless surveillance controversy Pike Committee Russ Tice Thomas Andrews Drake Thomas Tamm Programs Boundless Informant Dropmire ECHELON Fairview Insider Threat Program MUSCULAR PRISM Stellar Wind TRAILBLAZER Turbulence Upstream XKeyscore Databases Dishfire Main Core MAINWAY MARINA PINWALE Other Central Security Service Dundee Society National Cryptologic Museum National Cryptologic School National Vigilance Park NSA Hall of Honor Utah Data Center VENONA Zendian Problem

Coordinates: 40°25′54″N 111°55′59″W / 40.431530°N 111.933092°W / 40.431530; -111.933092