EFF, Greenpeace Fly Blimp Over NSA's Utah Datacenter; Launch Campaign To Stop Illegal Internet Spying

from the taking-it-to-the-skies dept

Earlier this week, EFF's Parker Higgins noted that he was about to head on a secretive "adventure to Utah" -- and now it's come out that he was actually there to fly a blimp over the NSA's infamous datacenter in Bluffdale, Utah. You know the one. It's received plenty of attention over the past few years, as it was designed to store a ton of electronic data that the NSA previously didn't have room for. Either way, EFF and Greenpeace teamed up to launch a new campaign called Stand Against Spying, and took to the skies in the blimp to get it some attention. You can also see a brief video of the blimp taking off. If you look closely, you'll see the big arrow pointing downward from the blimp saying "NSA Illegal Spying Below." The blimp -- technically a thermal airship called the A.E. Bates, apparently flew over the center for about an hour. In an interview with the Guardian, Higgins noted just how enormous the datacenter appears to be from above:

"The data center is this massive, sprawling complex. I've seen pictures of it, but it's different from the air. You get a sense, really, for the scope of this, the scale of what they're doing there."

Check out the Stand Against Spying website, and, in particular, its new Congressional scorecard rating our elected officials on how good of a job they're doing (or not doing) in protecting our privacy against the NSA. The list, unfortunately, shows how polarized this debate is. There are a lot of "A"s on the list, and a ton of "D"s and "F"s. There are very few "B"s and "C"s in between. The methodology explains how the grades were awarded. Improving grades is pretty straightforward: sponsor or co-sponsor good privacy bills and then vote for them. Simple? Simple. Now, it's time to move more people into the "A" category.

Filed Under: bluffdale, data center, nsa, protests, spying, surveillance, utah
Companies: eff, greenpeace

Forbes Publishes Blueprints Of NSA's Massive Datacenter In Utah

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Kash Hill, over at Forbes has a very impressive scoop: publishing the blueprints to the giant NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah. While the NSA had been at least mildly public in admitting that the data center existed, it really started to get attention back when James Bamford wrote about the center for Wired. Hill, who actually tried to do a drop in visit to the as-yet-unopened data center (without much luck) a few months ago, somehow got her hands on the blueprints:
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Top level Hill's article describes in more details what the blueprints show -- including the interesting claim that many of the previous estimations of how much data the center could hold may have been wildly off-base (as in the estimates were way, way too high -- but the center can still hold a ton of data, and that will only increase as tech improves).

Filed Under: blueprints, bluffdale, data center, nsa, utah

NSA Talking Points On Utah Data Center: We're Teaming Up With Tech Companies To 'Protect' The Internet

from the surveillance?-what-surveillance dept

Last year, well before all of the revelations concerning the NSA's surveillance program, reporter James Bamford, who has a long history of reporting on the NSA's questionable activities, revealed the details of the NSA's massive data center in Bluffdale, Utah, which it was building to host all of this information that it's been hoovering up for years. Michael Morisy, from Muckrock, used a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get the media talking points that the NSA used upon the groundbreaking of the building. As reported in Bamford's piece, there had been a "public" groundbreaking, with press there, and Morisy wondered how the NSA framed the building's purpose when it first discussed it. And, the answer, it appears, was to play down anything having to do with the massive data collection.

The talking points play up the fact that there's so much data online, but rather than talking about how the NSA is collecting all of it, they say that they're setting up this operation to help "protect" your data. From everyone... except the NSA, of course.

• DISCUSS THE FOR TAKING NATIONAL ACTION TO THE CYBERSECURITY PROBLEMS WE FACE.
  • US DEPENDENCE ON THE INTERNET PROBABLY GREATER THAN ANY OTHER NATION
  • NOT JUST MEANS OF COMMUNICATIONS BUT DATA IS THERE As WELL -- FINANCIAL DATA, DATA
  • CYBERSPACE CONTROLS OUR CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE -- BANKING, ENERGY, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, UTILITIES
  • THREAT IS GROWING -- INFRASTRUCTURE TARGETTED FOR AND POTENTIALLY FOR DISRUPTION OR DESTRUCTION BY GROWING NUMBER OF AND ACTORS

Notice, also, how when they do discuss looking outbound, rather than just "protecting" networks, they lump it all together:

WE NEED TO USE OUR PARTNERSHIPS BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT TO INCREASE OUR KNOWLEDGE AND CAPABILITIES IN CYBERSPACE TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE THREAT, AND TO BETTER RESPON TO IT.

Of course, they leave out that "the threat" is all of us in the public, and how to "better respon (sic) to it" is to collect all data everywhere.

Hell, they even go so far as to suggest that they're going out of their way, and beyond their mandate, just to "help out" all those tech companies they work with. Just to be helpful.

GOVERNMENT HAS NO LEGISLATED REQUIREMENT TO PROTECT THE DOT-COM NETWORKS. NONETHELESS, IT CANNOT BE ARGUED THAT THESE NETWORKS ARE CRITICAL TO THE DAY-TO-DAY FUNCTIONING AND OPERATING OF THE UNITED STATES, ITS GOVERNMENT, ITS BUSINESSES, AND ITS PEOPLE...

WE WOULD BE REMISS, AS PUBLIC SERVANTS, IF WE DID NOT USE THE INFORMATION WE GAIN IN PROTECTING OUR DOT-MIL AND DOT-GOV NETWORKS TO HELP TO SECURE THE DOT-COM NETWORKS AS WELL.

Yeah. And by "helping" to "secure" those networks, we actually mean "partnering" with the telcos to snarf up every bit of data that crosses those networks for our own spying efforts. And they keep going on and on about the importance of these "partnerships."

WE CANNOT DO IT ALONE -- NOR IS IT IN OUR BEST INTERESTS TO TRY. JUST AS CYBERSPACE AFFECTS EVERY ASPECT OF OUR SOCIETY, SO TOO MUST OUR EFFORTS TO SECURE CYBERSPACE MOVE BEYOND GOVERNMENT TO INCLUDE THE PRIVATE SECTOR, ACADEMIA, AND OUR GLOBAL PARTNERS.

And by "secure cyberspace," we mean "undermine the privacy of everyone" by collecting all their data. That's the part the NSA truly cannot "do alone."

I also love this one:

EMPHASIZE THAT NSA'S ROLE IN THIS IS NOT A 'MILITARIZATION' OF CYBERSPACE; TECHNICAL ADVISORY CAPACITY ONLY.

A "technical advisory capacity only" that involves on-premise systems at every major telco, hoovering up every single bit of data that crosses those systems to store for future "analysis" inside the Bluffdale center? That's just a technical advisory capacity?

But, don't worry, it's all "legal."

UNDERSCORE THAT EVERYTHING NSA DOES IN CYBERSPACE IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH LAW AND REGULATION AND THAT WE ARE 100% COMMITTED TO PROTECTIN THE CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PRIVACY RIGHTS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

And by "in compliance with law and regulation," we mean after we convinced the FISA court to secretly reinterpret a law that those who wrote the law say is exactly how the law was not supposed to be interpreted. But we won't even discuss how we interpret the law publicly, because that's a national security issue.

AT NSA, OUR TOP THREE CORE VALUES ARE LAWFULNESS, HONESTY, AND INTEGRITY.

And lying. Oh, so much lying. Did we mention the lying?

WE APPRECIATE THE WELCOME YOU HAVE GIVEN US.

And we know you appreciate our presence, because, well, because we know.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, data center, nsa, nsa surveillance, talking points, utah

Twitter, Data Center Delay Upgrades Rather Than Cut Off Iranian Communications

from the the-power-of-twitter dept

I recognize that it's still fashionable to bash Twitter as being a useless toy for people with too much free time (despite many, many examples of how useful it is for those who use it properly). Yet, for anyone paying attention this past weekend, Twitter has emerged as an amazingly powerful communications tool as to what's happening in Iran, where there are massive protests, riots, rallies and attacks following the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iran Twazzup page has had a tremendous wealth of information from inside and outside Iran -- the sort of information that we wouldn't know about otherwise. It's an amazing view into the country that simply wasn't possible in the past. I remember in the runup to the war in Iraq, there were a few Iraqi bloggers you could follow to get a sense of what was going on in the country, but nothing like the massive ability of thousands of people to easily get the word out on what they're seeing on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. It's really quite impressive, and I'm hard pressed to see how anyone could look at what's coming out of Iran via Twitter, and then claiming that Twitter isn't a useful or different communication tool.

With all that going on, it's fascinating to see that Twitter and its data center partner, NTT, have actually chosen to delay some critical updates, knowing that cutting off communications from Iran just as so many people are relying on it would be a disaster. While this does highlight a separate problem -- about the fact that as Twitter becomes a critical communication channel for some, the fact that it is a "single point of failure" is worrisome. It's definitely something that will need to be addressed at some point.

Filed Under: communication, data center, election, iran
Companies: twitter