Where will the NSA house its secret yottabytes?
Posted 11.13.2009 at 4:36 pm
13 Comments
Data, Delicious Data I see you
Warner Bros.
We always knew that the National Security Agency collects a lot of surveillance data from satellites and by other means, but we never quite imagined it was this much: the NSA estimates it will have enough data by 2015 to fill a million datacenters spread across the equivalent combined area of Delaware and Rhode Island. The NSA wants to store yottabytes of data, and one yottabyte comes to 1,000,000,000,000,000 GB.
Online storage startup Backblaze breaks down the mind-boggling numbers. Assuming that hard drives continue to expand their storage space until 2015, the agency would require either 100 billion hard drives or 2 billion Backblaze storage pods -- all for an estimated cost of $88 trillion, or just slightly less than today's global GDP.
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Technology, Jeremy Hsu, data, data centers, data storage, intelligence gathering, monitoring, national security agency, nsa, surveillanceCrunchGear reports that the NSA has already begun building a new data center in suburban Salt Lake City, complete with huge earth berms to hide classified military hardware and continuous flights of black, unmarked helicopters. We kid you not.
In case you're wondering just how the NSA plans to come by all its future surveillance data, check out the UK government's request for ISPs to keep records of all online communication. And then there's the CIA's investment in monitoring social networks.
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WOW
That is pretty scary.... The only way I'll except this level of surveillance is if they reduce the number of criminal and jailable offenses. I don't want to be sent tickets by a computer for j walking or spiting on the sidewalk or arrested for hate speech for being a jerk on the internet. (once they have smart enough computers it'll happen believe me)
I say a very productive society would have very few laws but have the few in place have severe punishments (ie murder, rape, theft). Everything else should be considered non-criminal and require only your money or time (community service) as compensation.
I wonder how much of that is spam. They can't check it all right? They probably pay some poor smuck (or a hundred) to sit there and just delete junk all day long.
@KH
LOL probably take 100X as much time it took to get it there even with all those guys, I know I wouldn't take the job :)
For fun, let’s do a calculation:
6,794,000,000 people on earth * (24 hours/day * 365 days/year * 80 years/person) = 4,761,235,200,000,000 hours
Now, you can store approx. 2 hours of high quality video using 1 GB. Thus, in order store the entire life of every person on earth in video format you would need:... Read More
4,761,235,200,000,000 hours / (2 hours/GB) =
2,380,617,600,000,000 GB =
2 yottabytes
How much of that data do they actually need? I'm guessing at least 50% of that data involves nothing of interest happening.
They probably couldn't feasibly analyze all that data.
It's called a database for a reason. If you get a name you type it in and see what hits you get on it, like using google for finding directions or where to buy a hammer. Only this google has pictures, locations lived, birthdate, and other important information that can be analised when needed.
Continual high res satelite film of the entire earth.
A murder takes place? Go back, watch the film, see who enters and exits the scene. Follow the perp, up to the minute, arrest the murderer.
Much like the passive recording database security cameras in most big stores today - not that useful for catching criminals, but gangbusters at convicting them.
Another possible reason - genetic figerprinting. If I was looking for a place that would be sympathetic with a national database of genetic code (a national family tree, if you will) then Salt Lake is where I would put it.
The Panopticon was a prison where it was impossible for inmates to avoid observation. They all went mad.
I'd be a lot more sanguine about the NSA if there were more war criminals being tried, and fewer reporters dying.
Bob Stuart
Perhaps the nsa could petition the order of the jedi for storage space in the library of ossus.
Maybe they can retrieve the email address of that Nigerian lawyer who says I have "a hundred thousand million dollars" waiting for me -- which is only a small share of the total amount, BTW. I accidentally deleted it.
(Google laughs at the NSA.)
Funny that nobody addresses the "WHY"...