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The National Security Agency is the geekiest of the spy shops. The NSA is responsible for gathering and parsing information from around the world, usually electronic data. At ReadWriteWeb, we're no strangers to big data, in fact we're fans. But sometimes you come face to face with facts and figures that bring home how big "big" is.

According to an article from the Baltimore Sun, in six hours, the NSA intercepts and stores as much information as you find in the whole of the Library of Congress.

The nation's cryptologic intelligence agency is moving towards a cloud-centric approach to computing. In an interview with Information Week, National Security Agency CIO Lonny Anderson talks about the cloud, cross-agency information systems and open source.

It turns out the NSA has many of the same problems that private sector enterprises do. They have issues with legacy applications. They face challenges with sharing information across silos and outside the firewall. Plus, there is the difficulty with managing mobile access.

The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed sources, that the NSA is launching a program to help protect critical infrastructure - including private enterprises - from cyber attacks. According to the paper, defense contractor Raytheon has received the contract for the project, which would rely on a series of sensors to detect "unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack." This follows the Lieberman-Collins bill passing committee in the Senate.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation is calling for nominations for their EFF 2009 Pioneer Awards. Nominees are celebrated for their technical, social, economic, or cultural contribution to the "health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications." Past recipients of the award have included World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Mozilla Foundation Chairman Mitchell Baker.