Turn It Off: NSA's Achilles' Heel

- Feb 11th 611 Folsom Street Protest (https://www.facebook.com/events/614121478661276/)

-Feb 11th Utah Protest (https://www.facebook.com/events/527159990715739)

It might be worth researching Yakima a little further - its been planned for closure since 2012 [1].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakima_Training_Center#Ancillar...

Shouldn't OffNow go further and propose legislation that impacts the telcos and all other companies within its borders that co-operate with the NSA without putting up a fight? Take AT&T for example. Near as I can tell, it has been one of the worst offenders and greatest facilitators. For a state to take direct action against the interstate business model of AT&T and other telcos, provides a great economic incentive for AT&T to actively fight back against mass surveillance in the form of challenging NSLs and lobbying against increases in surveillance state powers.

If we want to promote a political environment with greater states rights, you need to promote a legal framework where most of our goods and services are provided by organizations that cannot easily grow to be larger than a state because the cost of being interstate presents so many transactional costs to make it less competitive.

So, you're saying that organized political action to affect democratic change in America could be considered a "terrorist" threat? The fact that you're even worried about this shows how far our country has slid in terms of liberty and democracy. We are now on the cusp of being a police state, but I really hope people won't let that dissuade them from exercising their civic duty to engage the democratic process.

I think you are entirely correct. We've taken some measures to protect signatories. The site works really well with TOR/No Script. You can also conceal your name from being listed on the site.

>It's easy to yell from the sidelines, but what is this hoping to accomplish? A total shutdown of the NSA?

I doubt anyone thinks that, realistically. From what I gather this is essentially protesting, although a protest that actually causes those in power some discomfort. The NSA would have to start sourcing/generating it's own power and water. Anyone who works there will become persona-non-grata. In my opinion, this actually has the chance of doing something. Much better than 500,000 people marching down Broadway, then going home at the end of the day (Iraq war protest, anyone?).

And I don't think anyone wants to see the NSA go away completely either. I believe that if the Snowden documents revealed that everything the NSA was doing was outside the nations borders (or just not targeted at US citizens), no one would give two shits. They would even be pleasantly surprised, probably. But that's not what we found out. We found out that the NSA and it's secret court take the most liberal reading of the laws in place to do whatever they want, and with no good controls over who has access to what information, or when.

In short, this is a different form of protest, hopefully a more effective one.

It's a question of comparative damage.

What's worse, shutting down the NSA (remember, the FBI, CIA, etc, are still completely operational), or leaving it functioning with the damage it does to our democracy?

Given that the NSA has lately been justifying its existence by all that terror it stops, and then has been able to give exactly one case where its investigations have led to something (i.e., that one guy who was sending $8k to a terrorist body), and there is zero transparency into anything else it does...I'm extremely okay with it shutting down their data centers until such a time as the court system stops giving them a pass.

I think that the idea is not to force the NSA to completely shut down, but rather to force them to reassess their programs in order of importance given resource limitations. A program that doesn't yield much useful intelligence but consumes a very large amount of resources (such as the mass data collection programs) would get cut in favor of something less demanding yet more fruitful (likely targeted surveillance and data gathering.)

The NSA has operated for years under a total lack of resource constraints; which is a bad thing for any government agency. I would posit that the NSA mass surveillance efforts, in addition to being a troublesome invasion of privacy, are a textbook example of government waste. They're not effective, yet the bureaucrats keep expanding them because if they didn't, they and their contractors would be out of a job.

Agreed.

It's an attempt to circumvent democratic process. That may be deemed necessary but then isn't there a larger issue - that you have a pseudo-democracy in which the only way for the populus to combat rogue agencies within the state government is to perpetrate acts of aggression against their own infrastructure? The infrastructure those same people are paying taxes to implement?

Basically you're saying that USA democracy has broken to such an extent that the people need to initiate war - of a form - against the government's agencies.

Agreed, the first thing that comes to mind is "careful what you wish". At present, the NSA has an obvious vulnerability in that their data centres are somewhat in the open, and scattered around. If this scheme actually worked, they'd simply use it to enforce even higher secrecy, and complete autonomy from local state utilities.

This is a dangerous path to go down, essentially assuming the role of aggressors against the state, and causing them to harden their defences. It would completely subvert the key concepts of democracy, and end bloody.

Change the law, change their oversight, work within the system to improve it.

They used the interstate funding threat to get all 50 states to toe the line on 21 year drinking age.

It would go to the SC, and since they have precedent with the Medicaid expansion, this would be likely to go in the states' favour.

You mean the federal government which has passed the least number of laws of all previous' Congresses?

Water could be lost in evaporative cooling towers.

I did a quick calculation for the energy consumption of Tianhe-2, which has a power consumption of 17808 kW ...

1,538,611,200,000 J per day. Of course the Tianhe-2 is rated as the fastest, and the NSA won't be using something as big, but it gives you a rough idea of the power consumption of these machines.

Unfortunate, but likely true.

That's the problem with trying to hit the NSA in the pursestrings -- if they need more money, they'll just get it, and to add insult to injury they'll get it from us via taxes.

Where it could be spun as a 'LEED, zero emissions data center' (a Thorium reactor, perhaps!). As for cooling, the old Cray's used Fluorinert - I suspect 3M would be happy to brew something up.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

It's a move in a large game of chess. Just because your opponent will counter your movement, doesn't mean you shouldn't make a move. This is a viable strategy. The earlier it is, the more likely you have resources to counter a movement. This is an option now and with sound strategy could be used in various scenarios.

The NSA is successful now because of computational power and obscurity. They operate in the dark and as a result get away with a lot. But operational funds that feed their workers that work for them on all levels come from the people. Bureaucracy is acting as levels of abstraction preventing the people from shutting them down by denial of resources. The further you are able to cut down the bureaucracy and make it apparent that the NSA needs money from the people to operate, the more likely you are to engage the american people into saying 'no'.

So, should they need to spend money on energy, they will have to find a means to get it, and the more you block them, the higher the price gets. At some point, if the campaign is successful, they will have to appeal to the people for money, i.e. some tax to do it. Maybe it will be defense spending, or maybe it will be energy tax. But the clearer it becomes an issue of money, the more obvious what the move is, and can thus be countered into a game finishing move.

don't be ridiculous.

My understanding is the Provo site uses an open loop system. I'm not aware of any data center scale closed loop cooling systems.

Heat of vaporisation of water is tremendous, and the amount of cooling you gain by allowing for evaporation is huge. You can contain the evaporative cycle, but that takes a lot more engineering. As with anything, it's a cost/benefit question.

That states rights and nullification have sometimes been used for bad purposes doesn't mean that any use of states rights and nullification is automatically bad. Your statement reads as though that's what you mean. But surely you wouldn't say that states setting their own laws regarding taxation, wages, etc. (which are an exercise of states rights) are inherently bad?

> If that takes a Constitutional Amendment, so be it. Its time to get to work.

We already have one: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

What we need is to ensure it is being followed and enforced.

Typical mainstream propaganda.

Nullification was used initially to resist federal laws about returning captured slaves.

See Tom Wood's book http://tomwoods.com/books/nullification/ for the complete, surprising history of nullification.

No. At least I don't think so, but IANAL.

In general, bad laws are better fixed by repeal or amendment, as opposed to fiat of the executive branch, because they represent the people. The NSA spying on Americans is bad, and I believe a violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. That being said, the way to fix this is through Congress or the Supreme Court.

If you really want to see progress on this front, do it through the courts and through Congress. The wheels for this are already in motion, but it could take some time to have an effect. The two biggest things that could speed this up are to convince your friends and relatives that this is an important issue, and to vote for a non-establishment candidate in the upcoming mid-term election.

Unless this becomes an issue for the average American (hint: it's not yet), or unless we get non-establishment representation in the Capitol building, this won't get fixed the way it ought to.

Underground aquifers, reservoirs from streams, rivers, etc. Northern Utah gets a fair amount of snow as well. There are around 2.9 million people living in Utah[1]. There is also a fair amount of agriculture in the state, especially up north, which uses most of the water in the state[2]. States like Arizona and New Mexico are much more arid.

[1] - http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49000.html [2] - http://www.water.utah.gov/brochures/wiu_broc.htm

None. The only way to get rid of the GCHQ in the UK is revolution.

Jack Bauer

Continuously broadcast "The Archers" on all available frequencies.

Can you elucidate why the UK populus needs to turn to guerilla tactics against GCHQ?

If you can then you've a platform on which, instead, to press for political reform. I'd very much like to hear a succinct elucidation before anyone says that the political process is too broken to make viable such change as is necessary.