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Whistleblower: NSA Is So Overwhelmed With Data, It's No Longer Effective (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader cites ZDNet's Zack Whittaker report: William Binney, a former NSA official who spent more than three decades at the agency, said the US government's mass surveillance programs have become so engorged with data that they are no longer effective, losing vital intelligence in the fray. That, he said, can -- and has -- led to terrorist attacks succeeding. Binney said that an analyst today can run one simple query across the NSA's various databases, only to become immediately overloaded with information. With about four billion people -- around two-thirds of the world's population -- under the NSA and partner agencies' watchful eyes, according to his estimates, there is too much data being collected. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why NSA wants to dump the phone records it gathered over the past 14 years.
"Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
Is this guy saying that the NSA used to be effective? I do remember them doing good work back when they emphasized playing defense; and they have probably assisted with some really juicy targeted attacks on specific people of interest(whether criminals or well-placed figures in governments we are interested in getting to know better); but has the Total Information Awareness/dragnet-all-the-data stuff ever shown the slightest evidence of providing useful data?
What are we supposed to think from this? That we need to pour more money into mass surveillance to aid data analysis to keep us safe? This is a obvious example of the ongoing damage control. All of the recent stories concerning the NSA seem to be dancing around the main point: our government has been proven to steal information from all of us. They have been monitoring and recording all electronic communications for years. This isn't just a breach of trust. This is a complete annihilation of trust for anyone who has the ability to reason. Nothing anyone says who is or was involved with intelligence is credible. The conclusion that must be drawn to preserve freedom is that the government is an mortal enemy to the vast majority of people. This bitter idea needs to be made palatable to everyone. Only then can reform be enacted.
The NSA and FBI etc are trivial to thwart.. I did it to my ex NSA professor at college.
I bet him a solid 4.0 in his class that I could get an encrypted message past him and he would not be able to detect it. He agreed.
I sent him 10 files 1 had a message that I encrypted. the other 9 had the contents of /dev/random encrypted into them that matched the same bit length message all encryption blocks were 100% identical in size.
I won and was told I cheated.... I asked him if Spies follow rules and get in trouble if they cheat....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You insensitive clods! The NSA is having trouble keeping up with all your jibber-jabber!
How does he know that the NSA hasn't hired more informaticists in the past 10 years? If I read TFA correctly, he's been out for over a decade. I kind of doubt he's privy to top secret (or higher) information like that, although civilians are granted security clearances too sometimes.
I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just not clear on HOW he knows what he's saying is accurate. Just so you know, I'm not fan of Patriot Act or the NSA's "hoovering" of data, meta or otherwise.
How about YOU shut the fuck up? You're no better than a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist; you represent the other end of the same gods-be-damned scale, and as such is equally elligible to be ignored.
The real problem? An ages-old human tendency: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Knowledge is power. Also, power seeks more power. These are no-brainers; no tinfoil hat required; everyone knows this. The NSA (and pretty much every other 'intellgence' organization) always wants more, more, more information, even if they can't use it -- but still they want more. They're like a little kid who discovered sugary candy; it's up to the parents to tell them no. Here in the U.S., citizens must play the role of Parents -- but we haven't been doing our job. The NSA/CIA/FBI/{insert government agency here} has been holding their breath until they turn blue, pitching fits, and throwing their dinner on the floor (read as: doing everything and anything they can to keep us in a constant state of terror) so we'll just give them the candy they want (read as: ability to surveil anyone and everyone) to keep them quiet. What they need at this point is a good spanking on their spoiled little bottoms (read as: U.S. citizens speak the hell up to their representatives and tell them in no uncertain terms that mass surveillance has to stop!) and send them to their room for a good long spell without dessert (no more data for you!). It needed to be done years ago but we've been neglectful, overly-permissive parents. Time to fix that!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Even with good search tools, signal to noise ratio is still important.
Excess data with no correlation to the problems NSA is trying to solve (without getting into a debate over what those are) is simply noise.
Maybe the NSA could be convinced to do a special TV show appearance on Hoarders. Have some other agencies come together in an intervention to help 'em let go.
DOJ: So NSA... we've got some recorded phone calls here from August 3rd, 2003 between a Darlene [redacted] and her grandson [redacted]
NSA: Yes.. she's born in 1948, lives in Arlington, TX and her SSN is [redacted]. I remember when we first collected those calls.
DOJ: Well then, we listened to this a few times, and it sounds like some fairly innocuous conversation. Nothing criminal whatsoever.
NSA: Right
DHS: So... do you think we can delete these calls then? I mean, there's no..
NSA: NOOOOOO!! There could still be connections to terrorism in those calls... somehow! You never know what we might find on meta-data analysis
DEA: Look... we've identified all the phone references with mentions of drugs, and made copies of those for investigations. We never use the rest of those recordings, and I'm the only one here that really uses those at all. Maybe we could just.. y'know.. delete...
NSA: Don't touch that data! It's mine! I own it!
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
The reason the U.S. government can't get anything done these days is this Republican idea that Government isn't good for anything. This leads to putting people in charge of government agencies that don't believe that government can do anything. Think back to Heckofajob Brownie during hurricane Katrina. The guy had no emergency management experience and ended up running the worlds largest emergency management organization. This is pervasive through many agencies though and leads to a self fulfilling prophecy.
We were able to effectively end childhood hunger in the 70s, we were able to create the national highway system, put a man on the moon, lots and lots of large projects that were ultimately very successful but now a large chunk of the country thinks we don't even need the IRS anymore. We have a Presidential candidate campaigning on that very idea. Cruz is probably equally as crazy as Trump but they represent a good solid chunk of the population.
I hate how the conversation has been turned into Government should do everything versus nothing. That's why I like Bernie, he thinks Government could do more but recognizes that some things are better in private hands, he probably goes too far but when you think of it more as a direction instead of an overnight mandate things look a whole lot more sane. My health or my parent's health should not come down ensuring someone makes a profit for a hospital stay. Injecting money into health is counter productive, much the same way insurance is. Insurance companies should take our money and use it to invest, but they have people who's job it is to deny you your claim rather than figuring out how to fairly deal with a situation. So we pay care insurance for years and don't use our benefits, the moment we have a traffic accident we have to start paying more, or we have to hire a lawyer to make sure the insurance company actually provides the coverage they promised.
The signal to noise ratio doesn't change when you merely use less data.
False. Your statement is not true by default; it requires all the data to be known to be of equal quality.
Any time that some data is more strongly correlated than others, your noise is going to go down when you throw out the lower quality data.
Don't wave your hands, think it through and make a logical, reasoned argument.