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Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by yk on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @11:14PM (#4874831)
Wired had some time ago an article about one NSA data center [1]. That article had some additional numbers on the scale of the surveillance efforts. Specifically it did note that the specific site will have a 65 MW power station, which one can compare to some supercomputers. For comparision RIKENs K Computer demands roughly 12 MW of power. [2] ( One can also try to estimate similar numbers from the size of the facility and from the building costs. In all cases one gets a similar factor of a few above modern supercomputers.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3711603

[2] http://top500.org/list/2012/11/

Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by Uhhrrr on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @12:23AM (#4875022)
> a 65 MW power station

That seems like a giant blinking point of failure.

Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by carbocation on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @01:57AM (#4875284)
Alternatively, the power grid itself is the SPOF, and the 65 MW power station is essentially a redundancy.
Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by JakeSc on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @12:44PM (#4877423)
"Single Point of Failure" is my guess, for those curious.
Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by carbocation on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @06:21PM (#4879232)
Oh, yes, exactly right. I apologize for my telegraphic speech.