And Utah Follows Maryland's lead to Halt Water to NSA Data Center

I wrote yesterday that Maryland has a proposal to cut off water and electricity to the NSA data center.

And now a Utah Legislator is proposing to cut off water to the NSA data center.

Utah legislator to propose halting water to NSA data center

Legislation » The bill also would prohibit universities from partnering with NSA.

By Nate Carlisle

| The Salt Lake Tribune

 

First Published 5 hours ago • Updated 16 minutes ago

A state representative wants to shut down the National Security Agency’s Utah Data Center by shutting off their water, but has not yet filed a bill that he acknowledges has little chance of passing.

Rep. Marc Roberts, R-Santaquin, has entered what is called a boxcar bill labeled "Prohibition on Electronic Data Collection Assistance." The bill had not been formally filed as of late Wednesday, and no draft had been posted online.

And not only is Utah thinking of cutting off water it is cutting off access to the local university.

The bill would do more than shut off water to the Utah Data Center, which needs the water to cool the massive facility in Bluffdale. Mike Maharrey, the national communications director at the Tenth Amendment Center, said he has seen a draft of the bill and it would also prevent Utah’s public universities from partnering with the NSA and prohibit businesses from receiving state contracts if they also do business with the NSA.

The universities provision would impact the University of Utah, which for years has received NSA grants to conduct mathematics research and recently created, at the NSA’s request, a course teaching data center management.

If the NSA thought a PR problem was bad, running a data center without water is impossible.

Maryland Lawmakers push to cut electricity and water to the NSA's data center

USNews reports on Maryland lawmakers proposing a bill to cut electricity and water to the NSA.

The National Security Agency is based in Fort Meade, Md., and is currently building a new computer center there that will be cooled with recycled wastewater from Howard County, Md.

By Steven NelsonFeb. 10, 2014114 Comments SHARE

The National Security Agency’s headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., will go dark if a cohort of Maryland lawmakers has its way.

Eight Republicans in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates introduced legislation Thursday that would deny the electronic spy agency “material support, participation or assistance in any form” from the state, its political subdivisions or companies with state contracts.

The bill would deprive NSA facilities water and electricity carried over public utilities, ban the use of NSA-derived evidence in state courts and prevent state universities from partnering with the NSA on research.

If Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and others had been found to support the NSA’s efforts I wonder if the bill would have looked to cut off the electricity and water to their data centers as well.

A lesson from Bitcoin to learn from, Technology is not independent of Politics

Many technology people have problems with the political system.  Just look at the problems that existed for how the politicians thought Obamacare should run, and the technical community’s view of the service.

Technology Review has a guest post by 

Simon Johnson is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and was formerly chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Who discusses the problem for Bitcoin is the Politics.

Simon Johnson

February 7, 2014

Bitcoin’s Political Problem

If cryptocurrency is to succeed, its proponents need to acknowledge that it’s hard to divorce money from politics.

Money is always political. This is obvious enough when we argue about Federal Reserve policy in the United States, or who should next chair the interest rate-setting body. But for over 1,000 years, we have argued about the nature of our monetary systems and shifted between different ways of making payments. Seen in this historical context, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are just the latest in a long line of challenges to prevailing technology—and to current political arrangements.

The dominant design of today’s monetary systems is based on a western European tradition that can be traced back to the silver denarius of Emperor Charlemagne and before to the organization of the Roman Empire. This design bases the amount and nature of money in the economy on an interaction between government policy and what private individuals want to hold. Continual political pressure and repeated technological opportunity have produced many changes to that basic model over the years. Bitcoin’s rise may result in another round of that process.

Data Centers need to exist within a countries political system.  What happens in China and South America is different than how the USA and EU exist.  And, one of the biggest differences beside geography is the political system that exists in those countries.

Steven Levy Benefits from Snowden Crisis, gets 2 hrs with NSA executives

Most of us are familiar with Steven Levy and his writing.  Steven is most know for “In the Plex"

From the In the Plex  blog:

The Googleplex Goes Hollywood with “The Internship”

During the months I spent researching In the Plex, I often encountered the term “Googliness.” It was kind of a puzzle from Lewis Carrol. You can’t understand the company unless you grasp the meaning of this term, but of course the term means nothing unless you have a sense of Google’s essence. "Googley" is also as much an aspirational value as a descriptor. When Googlers use the term, they are referring to their optimism, constructive ambition, brains, technical prowess, and 

I have had the chance to sit in media briefings with Steven and met others who worked along Steven.  It is kind of funny to thing that I have researched the writer. :-)  It important to know a writer if you want to interpret what they write.  

Steven just posted on his 2 hour interview the NSA.

I Spent Two Hours Talking With the NSA’s Bigwigs. Here’s What Has Them Mad

• BY STEVEN LEVY
• 01.13.14

What I liked best in Steven’s closing comment on how he thanks Snowden.

Dark times as these may be at Fort Meade, it’s good for the nation that the closed-mouth agency is opening up more to the press. Personally, I owe Snowden some thanks. He finally got to me into the NSA.

What really pissed off the NSA is Snowden triggering the PR crisis.

They really hate Snowden. The NSA is clearly, madly, deeply furious at the man whose actions triggered the biggest crisis in its history. Even while contending they welcome the debate that now engages the nation, they say that they hate the way it was triggered.

Peer 1 Hosting Surveys Canada and UK users, 25% planning on moving out of US

DataCenterKnowledge has a post on a Survey and the impact of the NSA scandal.

Survey: NSA Scandal Prompting Shift Away From U.S. Providers

January 8th, 2014By: Jason Verge

 

Here is the press release from Peer 1 Hosting announcing the survey.

PEER 1 Hosting Research Confirms NSA Scandal Has Made UK and Canadian Businesses Wary of Storing Data in the U.S.

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

25% of businesses are moving data outside of the U.S. as a result of privacy scandals; 96% consider security and 82% consider data privacy their top concerns

Vancouver, British Columbia – January 8, 2013 – A new independent survey of 300 UK and Canadian businesses, commissioned by web infrastructure and cloud hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting, reveals that 25 percent will move their company data outside of the U.S. due to NSA-related privacy and security concerns. Canadian companies are even more likely to relocate data than UK companies, with one in three saying they will move away from U.S. datacenters. Despite this trend, the U.S. remains the most popular place for these companies to host data (51 percent) outside of their home countries.

And the survey results are here.

With an executive summary.

One piece of data that got me to believe Peer 1 was talking to the right people is the fact that 80% of the people weren’t surprised of the NSA spying.

And trouble for those who think it is all about latency.  This survey says users are more worried about security than latency.

The closing slide has a bunch of quotes.  It is easier to read this if you go to the survey PDF and go to slide 20.