NSA‘S New Spy Center To Be Far ‘More Than Just A Data Center’

A former NSA official going on the record for the first time on the secret, domestic spying program “Stellar Wind” and its role in data communication collection.

From The Blaze: In the heart of Utah’s desert, the National Security Agency is well underway on a project that has been called the nation’s largest, most expensive cyber-security project. Naturally, almost all details about the building’s soon-to-be inner activities are highly classified and no one is talking — officials in Bluffdale where it is being built and the nearby Salt Lake City are kept in the dark. Still, Wired’s Threat Level has gotten some details on the building and provides analysis on some of its expected activity.

Wired describes that the building is ironically and “blandly” named the Utah Data Center. When completed in Sept. 2013 it will house four 25,000 square foot halls of servers, among other things. Wired states that the cost for the project is estimated at $2 billion.

Here‘s some of the data center’s purpose:

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

Wired reports that the data center will store trillions of “words and thoughts and whispers” swirling on the Web. It states that “[to] those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.” In addition to public website data storage, Wired reports that it will seek out and house information on the “deep web:”

“The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.”

Even with data storage as its publicized purpose, Wired reports that an official involved with the program has said “this is more than just a data center.” It hopes to be the ultimate code-cracking facility:

According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

Full post at The Blaze and Wired