NSA Drowns In Useless Data, Impeding Work, Former Employee Claims

An anonymous reader writes in with this story of confusion at the NSA due to the flood of data they harvest. "Some of the documents released by Mr. Snowden detail concerns inside the NSA about drowning in information. An internal briefing document in 2012 about foreign cellphone-location tracking by the agency said the efforts were 'outpacing our ability to ingest, process and store' data. In March 2013, some NSA analysts asked for permission to collect less data through a program called Muscular because the 'relatively small intelligence value it contains does not justify the sheer volume of collection,' another document shows. In response to questions about Mr. Binney's claims, an NSA spokeswoman says the agency is 'not collecting everything, but we do need the tools to collect intelligence on foreign adversaries who wish to do harm to the nation and its allies.'"

Comments

same old same old

[minstrelmike]

I think this is the problem at most companies. Once someone in charge has a "good" idea, then no one else can point out how stupid it is. Collecting data is easy, cheap. Analyzing it is what is expensive. And useful. Collecting unanalyzed data is a waste of time and effort. Period.
And the first analysis is: what sort of data should we collect to make analysis easier? But of course, if people actually analyzed the process itself, someone would have already pointed out that the only way to measure cost-effectiveness is to have an actual goal in mind. Collecting everything you can get your hands is an easy goal to state.

Stating why all that data will help you prevent attacks on America instead of being viewed as an attack on Americans is a whole lot harder to articulate.

Same old same old.
It's a lot easier to invade a country than it is to state what peace would really have to look like.

Re:same old same old

[deconfliction]

Collecting unanalyzed data is a waste of time and effort. Period.

It is much, much worse than that. Collecting unalyzed data that, in more nefarious hands, can be used for extortion and political manipulation, in part because it was collected en-masse, is a criminal violation of spirit of the 4th ammendment to the U.S. constitution, if not the interpretable letter of it.

Not only that, but if in order to collect it, you had weaken the security systems used by the masses for their communications, you are basically making all those systems easier to attack for everyone. This is what has happened, both directly with things like the $10M to RSA, and indirectly, just by having a quid-pro-quo where all the tech companies are blissfully happy to not invest in real security for their users, because the more influential government overlords are totally cool with it. They leak the vulnerabilities they discover that they want fixed, and enjoy a massive trove of vulnerabilities they keep for themselves (and unknown numbers of others clever enough to discover them as well)

Re:same old same old

[greenbird]

It is much, much worse than that. Collecting unalyzed data that, in more nefarious hands, can be used for extortion and political manipulation,

Ummm...that's the whole point of collecting the data. It has nothing to do with national security. That's just the cover. It's about power and control.

Real Message:

[some old guy]

We have all this yummy data we gorged on, and we can't digest it all.

Obviously, we need a bigger budget for more contractor analysts and hiring Google to write better analytical tools.

Re:the answer: collect useless data

[flaming error]

Yep. When your job is to find a needle, the best strategy is always to pay top dollar for a few million haystacks and see if there are any needles there.

You Should Have Those Tools

[Bob9113]

"we do need the tools to collect intelligence on foreign adversaries who wish to do harm to the nation and its allies."

Ahh, good, something we can agree on. You should have those tools. And you do have them, even without the dragnets. Here's how they work:

1. Pick the person who you believe wishes to do harm to the nation and its allies.
2. Start collecting surveillance.
3. Present to an appropriately skeptical judge the reasons that you believe that person wishes to do harm to the nation and its allies.
4. The judge will decide whether your evidence amounts to reasonable suspicion.
5. As long as the judge agrees, you can continue the surveillance.

It's a pretty cool system, really. It ensures that you get the surveillance on people who really do appear to be up to something, while protecting the vast majority of people who are innocent.

The sock puppets have new talking points

[AHuxley]

We are back to the pre Snowden classic - too much information.
This has never been a problem due to fast sorting, keywords, voice prints, numbers called and cheap storage.
GCHQ and the NSA could get every call from Intelsat back the late 1960's for sorting and indexing. Once you have the total 'in' and 'out' points of any nation as its telco networks is constructed: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering shows how easy a lifetime of collection can be and looks like under one small program :)

Re:All standards are tested but some standards are

[cold fjord]

That's all very nice, but be clear -

Bruce Schneier: Crypto works.