Posted on 10/08/2013 10:19:57 AM PDT by mojito
...[W]e ran a story in March 2012 which exposed the NSA's unprecedented domestic espionage project, codenamed Stellar Wind, and specifically the $1.4+ billion data center spy facility located in Bluffdale, Utah, which spans more than one million square feet, uses 65 megawatts of energy (enough to power a city of more than 20,000), and can store exabytes or even zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 100 million times larger than all the printed material in the Library of Congress), consisting of every single electronic communication in the world, whether captured with a warrant or not. Yet despite all signs to the contrary, Uber-general Keith Alexander and his spy army are only human, and as the WSJ reports, the NSA's Bluffdale data center - whose interior may not be modeled for the bridge of the Starship Enterprise - has been hobbled by chronic electrical surges as a result of at least 10 electrical meltdowns in the past 13 months.
Such meltdowns have prevented the NSA from using computers at its new Utah data-storage center which then supposedly means that not every single US conversation using electronic media or airwaves in the past year has been saved for posterity and the amusement of the NSA's superspooks.
This being the NSA, of course, not even a blown fuse is quite the same as it would be in the normal world: "One project official described the electrical troubles—so-called arc fault failures—as "a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box." These failures create fiery explosions, melt metal and cause circuits to fail, the official said. The causes remain under investigation, and there is disagreement whether proposed fixes will work, according to officials and project documents. One Utah project official said the NSA planned this week to turn on some of its computers there."
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Crying semi-real tears here. May this spy facility be forever cursed.
Another failure in Oblabbas’ attempt to suck up all the power in the nation, OOPS
Total incompetence. Arc faults?! Those are COLOSSAL electrical failures. If you’ve never had the pleasure of being in a room when an arc fault occurs, count yourself lucky. The sound is deafening and you can feel the heat from 20 feet away. These are either deliberate sabotage events or complete incompetence on the part of the contractor. With automatic transfer switches, you have to wrench down the connectors with such torque that they make special wrenches to do just that. Any air gaps in a system carrying that much juice means instant death for anyone unlucky enough to be around when it arcs.
This is a poorly designed system all around, according to the WSJ article. They’re having cooling and generator systems issues? Having stood up 3 datacenters in my professional career, I can tell you that those sort of oversights would NOT be tolerated in the private sector. Those are career ending engineering oversights.
And I can personally tell you that if you can’t provide adequate cooling to a data center, you’re just asking for a hardware meltdown, esp. on the systems the NSA is purportedly using.
It's one or the other.
NSA gets the bug-ZAP!
Maybe somebody sprinkled holy water on the computers.
Payback for Stuxnet?
Never fear, the one in San Antonio took up the slack.
Good! Let’s pump enough power surge in there to have the whole place self destruct!
“....on Sept. 23, the contractors reported they had uncovered the “root cause” of the electrical failures, citing a “consensus” among 30 investigators, which didn’t include government officials. Their proposed solution was the same device they had already begun installing.”
Hmmm, you’ve found the “root cause” of the problem but the cause of the failures remain “unknown”?
Most curious.
Utah is also subject to dirty rains, where windstorms pick up tons of salt off of the west desert and then drop it against the mountains in rainstorms. The amount of salt in the rain causes substations to arc and shut down.
No doubt there are many in the NSA who love this country and its people, but let’s face it, government is no longer the friend or the servant of the American people.
Sounds like prayers answered. Too stupid to build a working data center that holds all our data.
Even 1984 used a meritocracy via exams so that the top 2% were the smartest.
Exactly. They are just incompetent or hired the people who designed Amazon’s VA data center.
THE FOURTH AMENDMENT MAKES THIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!!!
Easy fix:
Shut it down, turn it off forever.
This is a lie.
This is a problem that is solved by throwing money at it.
There is no shortage of money in the BlackOps program.
This article is some weird, thinly veiled (if it is veiled at all) propaganda planted story, though I don’t know for what purpose.
Appropriations Bill lobbying?
NSA attempting to buy the civilian regional electric company and power grid to maintain operational control?
False cover story to “replace” equipment that isn’t broken so they can use the old equipment for even blacker ops?
At this point in the decline in the democratic republic, why bother making any publicity, if not a false cover story for some nefarious deeds? No one would dare call the NSA out on it anyway, heck no one but a few thousand leeches in DC and the DoD/NSA power structure would even know it existed.
This is akin to the Iranians claiming to have only 300 centrifuges hidden in the Fordow mountain tunnels, while the satellite activity indicated well over 3000 centrifuge deliveries.
No one believed Tehran either.
Umm...arc faults in a data center? Suddenly carrying a cup of coffee into a raised-floor facility sort of pales into insignificance. I'd love to know how much gear was on line when it happened. I don't have to wonder what happened to that gear. Crispy critters.
I can only hope the NSA system was developed by the same nincompoops that designed and developed healthcare.gov. In that case, we are all home free.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.