By Joey Ferguson
BLUFFDALE — The Utah tech community has plenty of software as a service providers, app developers and hardware manufacturers. Now, thanks to the NSA and $2 billion, it has a million square-foot data facility nestled in the hills of Bluffdale.
In case you don’t know why, here’s some background.
The National Security Agency broke ground for its Utah facility in January 2011, according to a statement from the department.
“In an era when our nation and its allies are increasingly dependent on the integrity of information and systems supported, transmitted, or stored in cyberspace, it is essential that that space is as resilient and secure as possible,” said NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis in the statement.
Recently, the National Security Agency came under fire for allegedly snooping on telephone conversations made through Verizon Wireless.
Some of those records could end up right here in Utah, according to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune.
The facility will be connected with others in Colorado, Georgia and Maryland, according to the article.
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But, the million square-foot NSA facility in Utah is the biggest of them all.
“I wouldn’t say I know it for a fact,” Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientist’s Project on Government Secrecy, told the Salt Lake Tribune. But “when you build a facility of that scale, it’s probably meant to be used, and the storage and processing of large volumes of collected data would seem to be a plausible use of this facility.”
The facility will be able to store yottabytes of information, according to Gizmodo. That’s 1 trillion terabytes for those who don’t own yottabyte hard drives.
The facility will also have an electric bill the size of Salt Lake City’s, according to CNET UK.
