NSA drowns under an ocean of data

[bemildred]

All is not well in the land of US spooks despite them having access to all the data on citizens that they can eat.

William Binney, creator of some of the computer code used by the National Security Agency to snoop on Internet traffic around the world, has warned that the agency knows too much.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the NSA can't understand the data it has because it has too much to do anything useful with it.

Binny said that the NSA's addiction to data had made it dysfunctional and the agency is drowning in useless data.

http://news.techeye.net/business/nsa-drowns-under-an-ocean-of-data

This is, for what it is worth, what I would expect, that they cannot really process it all.

[liberal N proud]

1. Duh!

How many conversations the must have from love struck teens saying you hang up first the must have polluting their mass not to mention the endless text messages that tell no one anything.

It is laughable to think that collecting every conversation, every call and every tweet would be useable.

[PSPS]

2. The latest excuse for the swooners and apologists -- it's OK because they get so much!

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. yeah...but....

since they have what they have now
and it is too big to manage....

GOOD!!!

[Pholus]

4. Yes, as a predictive tool this was doomed from the start by the base rate fallacy.

But compiling dossiers for other non-Terra applications?

You know what they say: "Sciencia est Potentia"

[bemildred]

6. Correct.

It works as a fishing expedition, for building dossiers, you will find things; but not as a search, you won't generally be able to just find what you want when you want it, the needle stays lost.

I've been sort of amazed (well, not that amazed) since I heard about this in June that they all thought this was a useful thing to do. They are all that fucking dumb.

But it also reveals the true agenda, they want it as ammunition for the propaganda wars, so they don't know in advance which one of those straws they want, which might turn into a needle some day.

[Pholus]

8. It also is a beancounter's dream -- it is hard to manage a project that has to show results...

Domestic Terra plots are obviously rare enough that people working classically cannot simply use a list of disrupted plots to demonstrate that your program is operating at peak efficiency and justify your budget.

Dragnet surveillance to create dossiers on everybody is something with a "vision" that has definite steps of implementation and progress can be neatly presented in little bar graphs.

People who show progress in doing their jobs have job security. It is just sad that people who are working the problem as it should be worked probably are getting shitcanned to have their budgets sent to the Starship Commander.

[bemildred]

9. Correct again.

I can see you have experience with the government.

[madrchsod]

5. this link has a statement by snowden ...

interesting choice of words in his statement.

is he agreeing that the government should spy on some but not others?

does spying on everyone hide the ones they are looking for?

http://boingboing.net/2013/12/27/nsa-drowning-in-overcollected.html

[bemildred]

7. Yes, he is agreeing that some people need to be watched, that that is a legitimate function.

He is saying that "spying on everyone hide the ones they are looking for".

And the point is that all that data and all those search tools become a big attractive nuisance when work needs to be done.