The Utah Data Center will be watching YOU!

(JOHNNY ENGLISH for FEDERALJACK) Nestled in the mountains of Utah, somewhere in the confines of Camp Williams near Bluffdale, a gigantic data center is under construction. How big? About 1.5 to 2 million square feet. The power needed to keep this site online 24/7 is expected to be around 65 MEGAWATTS, or approximately costing 40 MILLION dollars yearly. If this center seems like a dream of the NSA, you may want to know it will be completed by September 2013. That’s right, later this year, the Utah Data Center will be fully operational. Let us look inside this massive compound to see what it will be capable of.

The Utah Data Center will be capable of storing data from phone calls, emails, text messages, social media and any other digital media that people use on a daily basis. Without thinking about it, most people will blow this off as propaganda. They will say that there is no way any agency will have enough hard drive storage to keep that much information on hand. According to Mashable.com, the daily internet usage is astounding. Facebook alone processes over 500 Terabytes of information every 24 hour period. In one day, enough information moves across the internet to fill 168 MILLION DVDs. And only 1/3 of the planet Earth is connected. Amazing numbers, right?

The heart of the Utah Data Center, built by the NSA, will be capable of storing YOTTABYTES of data. What is a yottabyte? Here is a scale used to describe the amount of data that can be stored on a hard drive(s):

• byte = 1 byte
• kilobyte = 1000 bytes
• megabyte = 1000 kilobytes
• gigabyte = 1000 megabytes
• megabyte = 1000 gigabytes
• terabyte = 1000 megabytes
• petabyte = 1000 terabytes
• exabyte = 1000 petabytes
• zettabyte = 1000 exabytes
• yottabyte = 1000 zettabytes

A yottabyte, if stored on 1 terabyte hard drives, would consume one MILLION city blocks. If 64 GB microSD cards were used to store on yottabyte, there would be enough to completely fill the Great Pyramid of Giza, or about 2,500,000 meters. That’s just ONE yottabyte. It is unknown how many yottabytes of information the Utah Data Center will be capable of storing. It is also unknown what information will be stored there. But with this capability, I highly doubt it will be used for potential terrorists on some government watch list alone. If there were that many terrorists loose in the world, I think a lot more terror would be happening. According to sources, the site is to collect “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and internet searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails- parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases (you joined the local book club right?), and other digital ‘pocket litter’.” 

Aside from the astronomical electric bill mentioned earlier, the construction costs are estimated from between $1.5 BILLION to $2 BILLION, not to mention another $2 BILLION in software, hardware and maintenance. That’s right folks, we are paying for our own surveillance with tax dollars. What of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that supposedly prohibits the federal government from collecting, storing, analyzing or disseminating the content of communications of U.S. citizens, whether inside or outside of the country? They can, and will, use a clause that will authorize this by having warrants issued by the FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Court. Welcome to Big Brother. You said it couldn’t be done. You said there was no way possible to collect all the information we transmit daily. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but in September of this year, it will be a reality. WAKE UP!!

Johnny English is the host of Broken Man Radio broadcasting live every Saturday and Sunday night 8-9pm Eastern on UnboundRadio.com! 

Thanks to Chris Coffman for the research he provided for this article.