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

The spying was never for terrorist and here is why

[3seas]

Terrorist can use any words they want, common phrases but given a different and agreed upon meaning within their dialog constraints.

On the other hand and within the timeline there was need to have an ear to the public in order to know how to respond in the cover up of 9/11 (Building 7 was not hit by a plane, It obviously was taken down by demolition and what it contained needed to be removed to help the cover up.) This is verfied!

What the government knew for certain is that they could create a feedback loop with the help of the media, so to influence the public to their bias.
They did not have to look for the needles in a hay farm (terrorist), as they were looking at the hay....... the public.

They never needed technology that didn't yet exist to process so much information for terrorist finding. They just made use of what technology they could get
Spying on Americans....