Meh, according to the article, NSA already has a water deal until 2021, which this bill is not attempting to change. I remember hearing about trying to cut off their water months ago; was an opportunity missed, or was it already too late then? How might they cut off the water sooner than 2021?
> How might they cut off the water sooner than 2021?
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.
> “What’s noteworthy is no one on the panel said: ‘Hey, wait a minute, we can’t do this,'” he says. “They had some specific concerns about the language of the bill, but there was no outright opposition.”
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.
For what it's worth, I went to the July 4 Stop the NSA rally at the Utah data center two years ago when I was living there. It drew quite a large crowd and felt to me like a large cross-section of the population from a number of different political and social groups.
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.
Why should that be surprising? Republicans / conservatives are all about personal liberty. And reducing taxes, which seems relevant in this case. The justification given in the article for supporting the bill is that they don't want to support the NSA "on the back of our citizens", after all.
That's not quite accurate. Republicans are all about their personal liberty, at the cost of yours and mine. It's not that surprising that some Republicans favor cutting the NSA's water, it's just bitterly ironic.
Don't confuse Republicans with conservatives: the latter, which generally are for personal liberty for all, are just a subset of the former.
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.
Outside of the US it's reasonable to 'paint' the political Left as socialists, mostly because they actually are. Other countries have actual functioning Leftist parties, America has far-Right and extraordinarily far-Right. (Although, I'll grant you that it might not seem that way from inside the US political 'bubble'.)
This is common rhetoric from America's own left but it isn't entirely accurate, and is largely offset by the fact that American use of the term Liberalism differs vastly with the rest of the world and history. Actual socialist parties have waned to a barely marginal existence in most European countries, and often have at most a "tea party" like relationship to more center-left social-democratic parties. America's Democratic Party is closer to a European Social Democrat party than a centrist European Liberal Democrat party, as America's use of the word Liberal is far to the left of European use of the term. Many European countries have sizable centrist 'classical liberal' parties that would actually be considered 'to the right' of American liberals, oddly enough.
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.
"Conservative" and "Republican" are both very broad terms. A conservative Republican could be an evangelical Christian who wishes to use the power of the state of enforce their rules of morality. Or it could be a hawkish statist who does not believe that the national defense apparatus could ever overreach. Or it could be a near-libertarian originalist who believes the government should be shrunk back to the size it was in 1800.
Your comment implies that the national security state is a partisan issue, which does not seem to be the case at all. Democrats are often some of the worst offenders on this issue (see the current administration), while the Republican side contains both your John McCains and Rand Pauls. The line that divides advocates of security vs freedom cuts across America in a way that cannot be described by outdated left-right ideological nomenclature.
> That's pretty surprising given how incredibly conservative/Republican the state of Utah is.
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.
As shocking as it might be, the NSA has other things to do which actually are crucial for national security. Reforming the agency will go much further than basically saying "you can't have cool servers or toilets that flush."
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.
Hating the NSA is far from "en vogue"...more like, trying to avoid 2014 becoming "1984" (as in the book) is en vogue.
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.
What in your eyes is an "American" intelligence agency? What does the phrase "American" mean to you in general? You capitalized it, so it's an important thrust of your point and, since it's almost always a meaningless hand wave instead of a useful adjective, I want to give you a chance to solidify your position before discarding it.
Also, "throwaway" is a poor regex for "should disregard opinion". Click my profile.
See my reply to "thizbuzz" in this thread for a very basic understanding of why I think having an intelligence agency makes sense at a basic level.
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.
Collecting and analyzing information for foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence. This seems like a fairly necessary organ of state for the country with the largest military in the world.
Possibly one of the most naive comments I've ever seen on 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.
> 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?
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.
Part of the reason people would even want to send a boat full of troops is because of the way our military interacts with the rest of the world. It's an unfortunate situation to be in but that doesn't mean it needs to continue forever. If we would just scale back the size of our military presence it would definitely be safer for everyone.
While I agree with you that much of our foreign policy causes us problems, I see that as orthogonal to the need for such defense even if we were to change said policy(ies.)
Safer for who? Probably not for Europe, certainly Eastern Europe who see what Putin is doing in Ukraine. Probably not for Japan and South Korea, both of whom rely on US military backing against undemocratic opponents who have designs on their territory.
US military strength underpins the current Western democratic system, which keeps the US wealthy through trade and commerce.
Since HN is not transparent about downvoting, other than that only certain users have the ability - I'd love the feedback on the reasons for the down votes.
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.
My downvote was because you led off with an unnecessary personal insult to a new user in response to a polite and legitimate question. He created an account a week and a half ago, has made a few high quality comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614442), and I wouldn't want to see your rudeness drive him off, or worse, encourage him or others to respond in kind. The rest of your response was on-topic and well-argued, although like some of the others I think you might be unnecessarily equating the need for the NSA as a separate agency to the need for any form of foreign intelligence gathering.
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.
You seem to be confusing the NSA with any agency that does any intelligence gathering or any military action of any sort. Yes, "NSA" stands for "National Security Agency," but that doesn't mean that other agencies can't perform legitimate actions for national security.
I see what you're saying. I think the three letter acronym doesn't matter so much (i.e. whether it's the NSA, CIA, or some other org) that carries out the mission - but I think given the sophistication of communications and technology these days - we'd be foolish not to have such an organization. To me the problem is that that particular org has shifted a lot of its resources and abilities to domestic surveillance - and what the article in question is discussing is just Utah symbolically objecting to it.
The United States somehow managed to survive for 176 years without the NSA. The country could probably get along well enough without them, if it had to.
Isn't this a semantic argument? There's really not much of a difference between "getting rid of the NSA" and "reforming the NSA by kicking out anyone in any way involved in the spying scandals and drastically overhauling the rules and oversight." Either way, you're getting rid of anything recognizable as the current NSA, and it doesn't really matter what you call the new agency that performs the legitimate tasks that the NSA is supposed to perform.
Well, not really. You'd absolutely destroy the NSA's experience and domain knowledge, setting back its operational capabilities by a matter of decades and basically put the Russians and the Chinese in the driving seat. It's not a small organisation - these things take a lot of time to set up properly.
How is it that people are willing to believe the NSA/Federal government intercepts and archives the vast bulk of the world's electronics communication, but lacks the capability to sink a well and pull water out of the ground? Evn in the bizarre situation that this were true, the NSA could still have giant data centers in this country by the simple expedient of building them on ships.
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 lacks the capability to sink a well and pull water out of the ground?
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.
As you mentioned, the discharge of heated water would be regulated by the EPA, depending on the body of water they attempted to discharge it in (similar to how its regulated for coal and nuclear plants that use water for cooling).
Getting water in Utah is a bit harder than just sinking a well and pulling water from the ground. Even if you get water, it's likely to have high sand and/or salt content, making it unsuitable for water cooling of electronics.
And as you said,
> I can't take your ideas about policy seriously if you are not connected to practical reality.
When you have the Army Corps of Engineers and a massive budget at your disposal, such problems tend to become marginal. It seems to have escaped everyone's attention that the Utah data center is only a couple of miles away from Utah's largest freshwater lake and there's a smaller lake only around a mile away, which already serves Camp William. The nearest river is only about 500 yards from the data center.
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.
OK, first you said "Just dig a well", now you want to get the water from the river. But again, it may not be that simple.
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.)
I'm perfectly well aware that Utah is a desert, thanks. I also thought about who was using the water already; if I was the federal government I could, in a pinch, just eminent-domain the golf course that sits adjacent to the river in question. I would much prefer, of course, to have the Army Corps of Engineers
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.
that's a pretty naive viewpoint. they could've just as easily built the facility on a military base... then what ? trying to prevent espionage through limiting access to resources is a very ineffective way...
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.
> 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.)
There is a fair bit of land controlled by the United States that is not part of any state. Us Territories like puerto rico, guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, areas treated as Territories like the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa, The District of Columbia, and Federal Enclaves and certain maritime territories and territorial waters would all be available even if every state said no.
Plus it's relatively easy to cancel a contract 7 years ahead of time, then renew it before that time comes up.
> The bill, H.B. 161, directs municipalities like Bluffdale to “refuse support to any federal agency which collects electronic data within this state.”
What about the IRS? Doesn't actually every government agency collect data?
NOAA and the National Weather Service, within Commerce, came to mind for me. No more weather forecasts for Utah, since municipalities would be prevented from providing utilities to federal agencies that collect data. Like the temperature.
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.
Don't let them control the narrative. The discourse they have is absurd.
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.
It is even worse. The amount of data NSA stores makes them an even juicer target for infiltration, subversion and otherwise gaining access to data they have collected.
This is such a scary side to consider. Most people who are just fine with their own government building dossiers right off the wire, and potentially losing said dossiers in haystacks, don't consider that foreign double-agents will become quite adept at searching the haystacks loyal agents have neglected.
It becomes even more bizarre when you consider that the NSA has been caught tapping foreign nationals and diplomats.
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.
Exactly. If I was in charge of Chinese or Russian intelligence, I'd have whole buildings full of people dedicated to how to tap the Bluffdale data centre: It'd be fantastic - get all the data without the political risk of trying to gather it yourself and possibly the ability to alter data at will.
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
"refuse to support any federal agency". Interesting -- so local law enforcement can still collect data, which I think is what people want. A lot of the strangeness of technology we experience isn't that something can be done, it's that lots of things can be done at massive scale.
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.
If I were in charge of implementing the retribution I would pick something far more innocuous than that, drunk driving, cheating on wife scandal, some sort of tax fraud, lest it give the game away.
Hey, you guys didn't even want the Freedom act, this will not be passed. We all know how things go over there, across the pond, we saw House of Cards ;)
Sorry, "across the pond" pretty much says "I'm British" to me, because we say that almost exclusively about you (IME). I don't keep up with where folks are from.
You're right, sorry, it was off-topic and with a big wink. But you know how it will go, the data center will never be without water. It isn't much different here (indeed in the Netherlands) I can tell you.
But they're not growing corn. I mean what would the NSA need water for ? Drinking ? Can't they just ship bottled water ? Do they really have that much personnel there ?
I'm slightly surprised this is a question. Water is part of many cooling systems. They're running a server farm. Surely they have some other uses for it, but cooling their server farm is the big, obvious application.