$2b PRISM program can store whole world  

揭秘“棱镜”项目：耗资20亿美元 可存全球资料

在美国犹他州南部的盐湖城，是美国国家安全局新址，美国最昂贵的秘密之一也隐藏在这里。据美国《星岛日报》16日报道，在这个占地约10万平方米的建筑群里，安放着“棱镜”项目的主服务器。这里的计算机能够储存至少50亿千兆字节的数据，单是冷却服务器消耗的能源每年就要耗资4000万美元，而整个“棱镜”项目耗资约20亿美元。[查看全文]

(ECNS) — A top-secret $2 billion facility in Salt Lake City, known as the Utah Data Center of the National Security Agency (NSA), is a storehouse for incredible amounts of both public and private data from international and domestic citizens, the US-based Sing Tao Daily reported on Monday.

The newly built spy complex is said to be filled with main servers of the PRISM program (a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by NSA since 2007), housing all digital data, including video chats, Google search history, Facebook announcements, file transfers, as well as intercepted emails and cellphone calls, on an ongoing daily basis.

William Binney, a former NSA employee and senior crypto-mathematician analyst, estimates that the servers in the new facility are capable of storing digital data of the entire mankind in the upcoming century.

With this program, NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collections on targeted users.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus once presented details on the "big data" spy grid and urged his colleagues working in intelligence to learn to "swim" in the sea of "big data".