The National Security Agency (NSA) is constructing a massive fortified data center in the Camp Williams area, near Bluffdale, Utah. Called the Utah Data Center, when completed it will occupy up to 1 million square feet under reinforced concrete, which is slightly over 20 football fields in total area or over 5 times the size of the US Capital building in Washington D.C. The main data halls will house racks of servers, computers, and hard drives that will be able to archive the surveillance information from government spying on private communications all over the world. This includes cell phone calls, text messaging, e-mails, instant messaging, internet searches, internet data transfers, and all the information surrounding personal travel and financial transactions, including retail purchases, bank transactions, loans, travel records, itineraries, and virtually anything that can be captured as a result of a digital transfer or record.
In the US, the NSA has created intercept points in the main internet data trunks throughout the country. These junction points contain switches and optical fiber splitters to essentially duplicate and route the data flow off the main trunks of the network into the NSA data intercept station. This means that everything that you send across the internet is funneled into the NSA. This also includes the interception of data flowing into and out of the US through the Atlantic and Pacific undersea data cables. The intercept station will then transfer this data flow directly into the NSA Utah Data Center, which will be fully operational in the fall of 2013. According to Wired Magazine, the Defense Department is expanding its surveillance network worldwide—termed the Global information Grid—to handle orders of magnitude more data than ever before possible.
An Army Corp of Engineers presentation given in Salt Lake City in 2009 indicated that the power requirements of the facility will be 65 MW, with each data hall receiving 18.75 MW of power. For a point of reference, 1 MW of power potentially could supply up to 1000 homes with energy. At this level of power, the Utah Data Center will cost about $40 million per year to operate. To cool the electronics and buildings, an elaborate chilled water system incorporating huge cooling towers will be constructed, which will require 1.7 million gallons of water per day at full load.
The digital storage capacity of data center also will be astounding. According to a 2007 report, the ultimate digital capacity of the facility will be far beyond anything else in existence and actually exceeding a zettabyte. Fox news recently estimated that the total capacity will be approximately 5 zettabytes. A zettabyte is a unit of measure for digital information storage, just as the more familiar terms kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte. As the scale rises to increasing storage capacities, the terms used to describe these numbers, in increments 3-orders-of-magnitude each, are as follows:
One thousand gigabytes makes up one terabyte of data; one thousand terabytes equals a petabyte of capacity; one thousand petabytes is contained in an exabyte; and it takes one thousand exabytes to equal one zettabyte.
In terms of the standard hard drives in computers today, which commonly may be one terabyte in capacity, this facility will house the equivalent of at least one billion one-terabyte drives (since one zettabyte is equal to one billion terabytes)! To get an idea of how many drives this would be, assume that each drive was a half-inch thick; if they were then stacked on top of one another, the stack would be 500,000,000 inches high or 7,891 miles high!
The drive to collect data on citizens of the US and other electronic communications worldwide are all a part of a global anti-terrorism effort. However, the Homeland Security directives that govern the US surveillance strategies is a part of the USA Patriot Act passed in 2001 as a result of the attacks of 9-11. Since that time, a growing surveillance monster is connecting the electronic dots that will allow the tracking of every individual wherever he or she may go. The network of monitoring also includes dozens of state and local “Fusion Centers” across the nation, which function to coordinate domestic surveillance and combine information obtained from law enforcement, public safety, fire and emergency response, public health, and private individuals and security personnel. These Fusion Centers operate hand-in-hand with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and over 16 Federal Government departments and agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the Defense Department, and Homeland Security.
Additional information that can be gathered and stored on each individual at the Utah Data Center includes cell phone positioning, TSA airline passenger data, surveillance information obtained from unmanned drones (Predator B class), cash transaction reporting by financial institutions to the Treasury Department, Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) data, electronic transit card usage, electronic toll collections on interstate highways, location and vehicle information gathered via license plate readers, and even video and audio surveillance systems on public transportation vehicles and trains. The public and private networks of video monitors also will become a part of this surveillance system soon. Ultimately, this system will allow total control over every man, woman, and child.
Thomas Drake, a former employee of the NSA and whistleblower, said of the dangers of the NSA data collection strategies, “The only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state. That’s George Orwell. That’s 1984. That’s what that would look like” (Fox News, Apr. 12, 2013).
The Bible predicts a coming world empire that will be able to control all people as never before. This “Beast” as it is called (Dan. 7:7-8; Dan. 7:19-25; and Rev. 13:1- 4), will force all of its citizens to obtain a mark, which will be used to confirm identity and control all financial transactions (Rev. 13:16-18). The prophets predicted that anyone that refuses to take this mark will be unable to buy or sell and they will likely be classified as a security risk to the empire. The Lord says that anyone who takes the Mark of the Beast will suffer the wrath of God and be cast alive into a lake of fire to suffer for all time (Rev. 14:9-11).
The global surveillance network that is now being built at the Utah Data Center and other facilities like it worldwide, will become an instrument of control that will make the empire of the Antichrist the worst totalitarian regime in history. As followers of Christ, we should be prepared to turn away from this evil system, because its end will be in a fiery destruction of nuclear war and lead to eternal damnation for anyone that obtains the Mark. Decide now and Escape to Safety.
References:
Wired Magazine: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1; article by James Bamford, author of “Body of Secrets”
Army Corp of Engineers; Utah Data Center (UDC); Sandy Ferguson, Troy Lange, and Carlen Capenos; presentation made in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 13, 2009 (https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=946cfa7f72b38f834fcba7fd001bb10d )
