Where have you been for the last few years? What resources exactly do you think they lack? Why do you think the NSA just built a 1,000,000 square foot data center in Utah?
Utah. There is a very high chance this conversation is now sitting on a disk in Utah for a bit. Collectively the NSA has built or leases more data center space than almost any other entity on the planet. Maybe not even the big four (goog amzn fb) rival them. What are they doing with all that space and black budget?
That's part of the reason for the Utah datacenter. Consolidating several NSA datacenters around the country into one super-secure fortress.
First, separate offline networks and the most advanced network security ever conceived will be put in place at this new datacenter.
If you're thinking that a reverse engineered Stuxnet might be able to hop over to the secure network, I doubt it, and even if it does then what will it do to transmit the data out?
It is slightly insulting to the engineers and security experts whose full-time job is to keep the NSA secure, but I suppose this scenario is worth discussing just in-case someone thinks of a clever way which the NSA has not.
The most vulnerable aspect is any remote access either to company servers or to the NSA search tools. I would hope that a data dump or unrestricted access to the NSAs "database" would be completely impossible. Even with extensive insider knowledge of the Utah datacenters systems, an ex-employee would have zero chance of gaining unauthorized access.
It'll be easy to see if the NSA's survelliance programs continue, just check if the parking lot is full at their Utah data center: http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/
DigiCert's HQ is a 10 minute drive away from the NSA's Utah Data Center. I don't think you you need to be particularly paranoid to think there might be foul play there.
The Utah data center is more of a consolidating effort than some new spy program. It's suppose to save money and increase security (and storage ability).
The NSA has computer security technology that the public and other government do not. They also have an unfathomable amount of processing power without the Utah data center (Tordella).
What congress in their right mind would slash the NSAs budget and put the entire nation at risk?
Also, it isn't a set fact of life that all government agencies / programs are inefficient and incompetent.
Possibly, but there’s also an historic antipathy between the DOD and CIA: the CIA has worked closely with Amazon building their datacenters and the NSA (part of the DOD) has worked closely with Microsoft in the past, especially with the construction of their San Antonio data center. When the deal was finalized for building the San Antonio Azure datacenter the NSA quietly approached the contractor and said “we’ll have one of those too, right across the street from where you’re building one for Microsoft.”
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