Utah Considers Cutting Off Water to the NSA’s Monster Data Center
wired.com
wired.com
They won't. It's called "grandstanding". Welcome to politics.
Also, they second this is about to get real, the NSA announces the redundancy plans (easily 100s of "high tech economy jobs") and everyone runs screaming for the hills.
That's pretty surprising given how incredibly conservative/Republican the state of Utah is. I'd be surprised if the bill passed (and if it was it would surely be caught up in litigation), but kudos to someone in such a conservative area recognizing that personal liberty is more important than security.
I don't think there's anything strange about a predominantly Republican state being worried about what "big brother" is up to in their own back yard. Especially Utah, which still has an unusually fresh memory of real repression at the hands of the federal government related to its history with Mormonism[1] and polygamy[2]. It probably also helps that the Democratic Obama administration has caused a lot of Republican voters in Utah to dislike the federal government even further.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latter_Day_Saint_polygamy_in_th...
Spend some time in conservative circles and you'll learn that there's not a lot of love for the GOP leadership. Conservatives (both fiscal and social flavors; they too are not just one and the same) vote Republican for the same reason many on the Left vote Democrat: not that they're thrilled with the candidates, but rather they consider them the lesser of two evils.
My point? That just as its unfair and ignorant to paint everyone on the Left as a socialist, you can't simply paint everyone on the right with the same broad brush.
To be sure, a thorough examination of social conservative thought will be fascinating reading.
So no, America is not really a right and far right country, it's more a polity of extreme Conservative and progressive ideologies lorded over by two centrist parties with a heavily authoritarian commonality between them. What the U.S. entirely lacks is an anti-authoritarian centrist Liberalism akin to that in Europe.
To illustrate, if we were to align US parties to those parties in the UK, you'd likely get the following: the conservative Republicans (US) align to the conservative Tories (US), the far right Tea Party aligns to the far right UKIP (UK), the progressive Democrats (US) align to the social democratic Labor party (UK), and then the UK's centrist Liberal Democrats do not align to any recognizable political organization in the US. The UK Lib Dems at best might loosely align to a combination of US civil libertarians and classical liberals, both of which belong more or less to the politically homeless. Some might say those fall under the Democrat tent, and yet the most vocal proponent of civil liberties in the US government right now is conservative Rand Paul, so go figure.
To come full circle, a US equivalent of the UK LibDems, were it to exist, would likely be the most vocal opposition to the NSA.
Appropriate username btw :)
The Lib Dems are ineffective, where's the US comparison to the SNP, the Greens, the SSP, actual parties of the left?
I think it's too soon to judge whether the Lib Dems are ineffective.. they're still a young party and are growing faster than either the Tories or Labor (correct me if I'm wrong there). The current system does not favor their existence, so electoral reform is their main priority. The same should be true for all third party movements in the US, as the current system is mathematically predisposed towards two party outcomes. It's not that just hard left parties are missing from the American party system, but rather any partisan organization outside of the two major parties.
If they're for personal liberty, its not for Joe Public.
Your surprise that "incredibly conservative/Republican" types are for this reveals that you don't know very much about us.
Isn't it conservatives that are for guns and their reason is the anti-government militia amendment in the constitution? I'd expect them not to like NSA either.
Isn't Ted Cruz held out as incredibly conservative/Republican? He voted "Yes" on the recent NSA reform:
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/senate/2/282
There are many other conservatives who have major issues with the NSA. Don't believe the hype that their principles are simply anti-left.
I know hating the NSA is en vogue but seriously. This is almost as bad as stonewalling and other hostilities toward other branches of government simply because the opposite party is in power (that goes both ways, before you think I'm attacking the right). The NSA committed grievous sin. I'm as upset about it as you. Even so, it baffles me that we would be having this conversation about water.
God, stuff like this just depresses me. And that you love it, too. That depresses me as well. It's a cheap "rah rah go Utah sticking it to the man" puppet show that is ultimately meaningless, but you and many like you just eat it up.
--
Edit: Between this stupid "you're submitting too fast" barrier that I've never seen until recently on a >year account, downvoting being blessed as okay to represent disagreement, graying comments as a result which silences disagreement and causes a dogpile effect, arbitrary shadowbans in 2014, and my critique of this political theater being interpreted as defense of the NSA or an advertisement that I need the condescension of having an intelligence agency explained to me (better: I'm not going to answer your question but anybody that passed US History knows the answer), HN has done a pretty good job of silencing opposing thought. I asked a question and it's barely legible. Even now, watching people Cmd+F my username and downvote every hit between refreshes. You sure showed me for not thinking like you!
Since I disagree with many things HN holds dear, and since the people and technology have made clear that's not welcome, after six years of contributing to Hacker News on various accounts, I'm done. I can't take the technology nor the people any more.
It amazes me how hostile HN is now, both socially and technically, and yet people remain. The crowning irony is that people here complain about becoming Reddit, yet on some of the very lesser-known subreddits I've had literally life-changing conversations. Here it's just bickering to see who is more right. Nothing of value comes of this thread, or the hundreds before it. Nothing. I want a refund of my time wasted here.
We keep a military at the most basic level - so that another country can't send a boat full of troops over here, or airplanes filled with troops - invade us - and take over. In other words, basic protection against normal acts of war. Imagine if you, thizzbuzz, suddenly awoke tomorrow and found out the dictator of some small European country died, and you were the heir apparent. What would you want to have to make sure that Russia didn't just come in the next day with tanks and declare your country was now theirs? Oh - that would be a military.
So great, you've made sure you have that. Now at the very least, if some other country violates your sovereignty, you can at least put up a fight, and it will be a visible spectacle to the rest of the world, which might come in and try and help you.
Next up - Inhabitants of your country speak one language. The rest of the world speaks other languages. If a newspaper in a neighboring country starts publishing articles calling for an invasion of your country, in a language most of your inhabitants don't speak...isn't that something you'd like to be aware of? Who do you expect to be responsible for keeping tabs on that? Are you just going to hope that one of your citizens keeps tabs on it for you and drops you an email (at dictator@smalleurocountry.eu) to let you know you might want to be on the lookout for an invasion? Or would your citizens prefer your government is a little proactive about this? (assuming you're a benevolent dictator that wants to keep his country.) Sounds to me like you want some sort of government agency that keeps tabs on such things - you know, for NATIONAL SECURITY.
What you DON'T want, if you have an American mindset, is for that agency to be spying on all of its native citizens. That doesn't mean you don't want such an agency to exist.
US military strength underpins the current Western democratic system, which keeps the US wealthy through trade and commerce.
Yes but not the entire or only reason, so even if we had the best possible foreign policy, we would still need a national defense.
> is discussing is just Utah symbolically objecting to it.
It may just be symbolic, but sometimes symbols are important. If nothing else, if more and more parts of US society brands the NSA as un-American pariahs, it may make more insiders think twice about what they're doing (and about whistleblowing), may make it harder for Congress to keep supporting it, and may make their recruitment more difficult.
How a country could exist without an organization that pays attention to what the rest of the world is up to towards the goal of keeping itself "secure" is beyond me. What I wrote was a fictional circumstance which I thought explained to others how you'd arrive at this conclusion - i.e. answering the question that was asked.
It might have been fine on other forums, but I see that I would have been better off letting the rest of my answer stand on its own merits (or not.) Will keep that in mind going forward.
No other country has intelligence services with even a fraction of the reach of the NSA, so clearly countries can exist without an NSA class agency.
Whether a country could exist without an organization that pays attention to what the rest of the world is up to is another matter. It's a role served by diplomatic services, and where even the most low tech intelligence agency can provide substantial additional abilities without stepping all over civil liberties. I don't see anyone questioning the need for a diplomatic corps, foreign service, or even basic human intelligence agencies, or for that matter basic sigint.
But it's an entirely different issue than whether an agency like the NSA is needed - or warranted.
Arguably, while the NSA may thwart some threats, it is also part of maintaining the image of the US as the big bully of the world, and as a result it is part of creating the type of threats it is meant to protect you against. It's self-reinforcing.
Arguably, NSA-type stuff (SIGINT) saved our behinds in World War II. Enigma let us read the German intentions, and Purple let us know what the Japanese were planning. The battle of Midway, for example, could have been completely different without SIGINT. So there's good historical precedence that we need something like the NSA.
On the other hand, we didn't figure out what the Japanese were up to by collecting metadata on domestic telephone calls. That is, some SIGINT activities are arguably essential, and some are... otherwise. The "otherwise" ones are both more intrusive to personal privacy, and less effective at national defense.
So one can be in favor of having the NSA, and against the NSA as it has become.
Side note: If there's ever another successful attack on the scale of 9/11, you're really going to see the US move toward a police state...
You do realise that you have a diplomatic corps with feet on the ground and people who speak the native languages in a substantial percentage of countries, right? And that e.g. CIA have analyst desks for handling exactly this type of thing?
What makes you think the NSA is needed for that? And even if they were, it'd be something like %0.001 of their resources that'd be needed for that.
The NSA's primary mission is sigint targeting non-public sources, as the CIA and DIA and other agencies are under substantial restrictions in terms of what sigint they are allowed to engage in without going through the NSA.
You're hardly as "upset about it as you" if you can't see why any act that makes their NON-AMERICAN surveillance state harder to implement is a good idea.
But then, you used a throwaway account, so I think that speaks for itself.
Also, "throwaway" is a poor regex for "should disregard opinion". Click my profile.
As for your mentions of karma, and my commenting on "throwaway" being in your name - you're right, I don't click through and check the status of a user before replying to their comment on this forum, or any other - because I'd rather reply to what they wrote. Was I tricked by the "throwaway" in your username? Absolutely - your plan worked as you desired. If you think this makes me lazy, so be it. I'd say you intentionally mislead me, because putting "throwaway" in a profile is a common convention on internet forums, and I absolutely just accepted it as is.
What does "American" mean to me in general? I'd say the founding fathers of our country made clear their intentions in the Constitution, and Bill of Rights. To me, being American at present means agreeing with those intentions - which encompass a lot of ideals about personal freedoms, and rights to privacy.
I think the current attitude of many branches of our government toward our rights to privacy is "un-American" - especially with respect to the NSA. I'm not going to write a treatise here on exactly what that means, however I think it should be self evident to those who have a good grasp of American history. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that recent immigrants who have achieved citizenship and taken the requisite tests might have a better understanding of the concept of what "American" ideals supposedly are than many native born citizens.
Plus it's relatively easy to cancel a contract 7 years ahead of time, then renew it before that time comes up.
another point is that the law won't seem to have any effect (even if it passes by the way - no guarantees on that) on the current installation until 2021... 7 years is a pretty long term to revert a bill or make new legislation that allows other options...
afaik (I'm not a us citizen) federal law supersedes state law in the US. So it follows that you need to have federal safeguards against wiretapping and whatnot... state legislation is cute at best but seems ineffective.
States can draft laws that contradict federal laws (or disallow federal practices), leading to court cases where the state defends the constitutionality of their law, and the feds defend the constitutionality of the federal law (or practice.)
This is one of the faster ways a law can make its way to the supreme court (see the ACA implementation in half the states, before it came before SCOTUS and it was ruled constitutional.)
It'd be interesting to see this law take effect, have the feds sue, and watch the states defend their decision in the supreme court, in which case we'd get to see a ruling on the constitutionality of the wiretapping (if the justices were willing to hear/rule on it.)
Sorry, but the comment above is pure magical thinking. I can't take your ideas about policy seriously if you are not connected to practical reality.
But they also have to dispose of the heated water. An ordinance preventing that would cause complications.
And if electricity supplies are withheld, they then have to spend more money installing generator plant and ( vetted ) personnel to operate that.
> the NSA could still have giant data centers in this country by the simple expedient of building them on ships.
Ships require victuals, fuel and connectivity. Ships are subject to inspection by maritime authorities, unless stationed in international waters - which an intelligence agency would never risk.
~~
All of this would require a request for expansion of the budget, or alternatively eat into the operational aspects of the current budget.
In the absence of any high-level political will to address the underlying issue, making routine operations difficult and expensive would seem to be the only practical approach.
And as you said,
> I can't take your ideas about policy seriously if you are not connected to practical reality.
Yup.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/NSA+Utah+Data+Center/@40.4...
Tell me again why this would be such a problem for the Federal Government in the unlikely event that Utah actually signed this into law and it remained in force in 2021. I'm pretty sure that water access was something taken into account when they selected the location from the data center in the first place, along with the possibility of the water supply being interrupted by sabotage in the event of war.
Do you know how much water is in that river? It isn't all that large. Do you know how much of the water is already spoken for by various canals and city water treatment plants? Do you know whether any of the water in that river is actually available?
Same thing with the lake. The lake is the only supply of water to the river. You can't just pump a bunch of water out of the lake without cutting out the people downstream who need the water from the river.
This is Utah. It's a desert. Water's not a real plentiful commodity out here. It's precious and scarce. Most of the easy answers don't work. (If they did, somebody else would already be using the water from that source.)
You can keep pretending that if this bill were to pass it would be a huge problem for the NSA and the feds, but the idea that the Utah government would be able to hold the facility hostage is a ridiculous pipe-dream.
What about the IRS? Doesn't actually every government agency collect data?
Thankfully, reading the bill paints a little more optimistic of a picture, but I can still see several interpretations of the wording that could have unintended consequences.
Their system not only doesn't work but creates haystacks so big that needles get deeply hidden and no real intelligence happens.
The rationale for the spy-everyone story is such an implausible fantasy. We have to stop letting people get away with saying it without being challenged.
This needs to stop.
Two countries in conflict may hack the US as a proxy to get at the others communications - with no direct interest in the US at all.
This is a factually possible scenario. It's the unchecked blank check bureaucratic process. This the natural output given such input parameters.
We need a way to make this more real to people:
Dysfunctional projects of grandeur is how organized people respond to no oversight and unlimited funding. They will invent justifications to perpetuate their purpose. This happens through an utter failure of discretion in governments, startups, not-for-profits, wars, corporations... everything.
Preventing it is Our Job to make a functional society.
-Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials
>“refuse support to any federal agency which collects electronic data within this state.”
Wikipedia has a huge list of U.S. federal agencies [0]. Can someone provide an example of a federal agency that doesn't collect data in Utah?
Skimming through the list, I would expect that nearly all of them do collect data in Utah.
(Admittedly, I didn't read the bill so it's quite possible that "support" and "data" are very specifically defined.)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_agencies_in_th...
So even if they pass this next year, the NSA have six years to sue them and do whatever they like - i.e. ruin the lives of anyone who opposes them, and any legislators who voted in favour of this, and then maybe implant their own people, who'll vote that everyone from Utah is now an NSA-serf and must provide blood for cooling.
More effective would be a cunningly managed massive algal bloom upstream from their intakes, which would neatly clog all the things, and hopefully cause a large fire, localised entirely in their information nexus of doom.
You might just wake up one morning with a squad of armed policemen storming your house who will "find" child porn on your computer.
The original House of Cards was British, though it doesn't really reflect how UK politics are.
Yes, Minister comes closer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080306/
Though that implies that through the farce we get things done, which hasn't been true for a while.
Not sure what this has to do with the water supply to a datacenter though.
Anyway, agreed, it's an off topic diversion.