NSA Put A Premium On Collecting Info, But Not Making Sense Of It

from the needle-in-a-haystack dept

You may remember that almost exactly a decade ago, the news leaked that key Iran-Contra political operative John Poindexter, still working for the US government, had been working with the NSA to create a system called Total Information Awareness or TIA. The news quickly went viral, with people (quite reasonably) worried about the government snooping on their private data. Suddenly everyone was against this program, Poindexter was soon out of a job, and the TIA was officially put on the shelf. Except... that's not quite what happened. As you should be aware by now, the NSA has been Hoovering up pretty much every bit of data it can, sometimes using confusing loopholes or legal changes to make it possible.

As a writeup at the NY Times notes, the NSA is basically doing everything that was promised in the TIA program... but without the basic safeguards that were included with TIA:
What’s missing, however, is a reliable way of keeping track of who sees what, and who watches whom. After T.I.A. was officially shut down in 2003, the N.S.A. adopted many of Mr. Poindexter’s ideas except for two: an application that would “anonymize” data, so that information could be linked to a person only through a court order; and a set of audit logs, which would keep track of whether innocent Americans’ communications were getting caught in a digital net.
And let's not even waste time discussing how the NSA actually had a much cheaper program that actually did have safeguards, because the guy who exposed the world to that almost end up in jail for a few decades.

Of course, the bigger issue here is that in gathering pretty much everything they can, actually making sense of the data is becoming more and more difficult:
The N.S.A. came up with more dead ends than viable leads and put a premium on collecting information rather than making sense of it.
Of course, that doesn't mean people's privacy isn't being violated (something even the NSA itself will admit when forced -- though it still refuses to say how many Americans are having their privacy violated). So the end result is that the NSA is collecting all of this data, violating people's privacy (and, most likely, the 4th Amendment). And, out of that they're turning up very little in the way of useful leads.

That's not exactly a compelling pitch.

But, as the NYT piece notes, even though the NSA built a system more powerful and privacy invading, and less effective (and probably more costly) than the original, much decried, Total Information Awareness program, very few people seem to be raising the alarm or particularly concerned about it. Apparently, the NSA has learned the best secret of all. If you don't actually name the program something creepy and Big Brotherish, and don't have a conspiracy-theory-inspired logo to go with it, you can get away with all sorts of stuff.
There. Now don't you feel safer knowing that your tax dollars are funding this kind of thing?
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Filed Under: data, nsa, privacy, spying, total information awareness


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  • icon
    Beta (profile), 23 Aug 2012 @ 4:12pm

    fundamentals

    Collecting lots of data is easy.

    Wandering around in it and spying on this individual or that is fun.

    Doing meaningful analysis is neither.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2012 @ 4:53pm

      Re: fundamentals

      TIA should now be known as TMI.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      The eejit (profile), 24 Aug 2012 @ 5:04am

      Re: fundamentals

      It's amsuign becaus ehte level of information that can be tied together is infinite, but the number of people who can competently collate it is finite. This poses a paradoxical method of both spying and creating jobs: employ more people to spy on themselves.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    athe, 23 Aug 2012 @ 4:34pm

    Did they...

    Did they get permission to use that there "Eye of Sauron" sitting up above the pyramid?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2012 @ 4:52pm

      Re: Did they...

      That pyramid is merely a pyramid shaped mountain. Aptly titled Mt. Doom.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That Anonymous Coward (profile), 23 Aug 2012 @ 10:51pm

      Re: Did they...

      how quickly we forget someone was selling them a Palantir to use.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Kyle Reynolds Conway (profile), 23 Aug 2012 @ 4:38pm

    Where--Oh! Where!--are the motherfucking eagles?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2012 @ 4:56pm

    Illuminati symbol in there.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2012 @ 5:34pm

    If you don't actually name the program something creepy and Big Brotherish, and don't have a conspiracy-theory-inspired logo to go with it, you can get away with all sorts of stuff.

    What's the point of coming up with an evil scheme if you don't name it something ominous? As far as I'm concerned, any villain who can't come up with a decent fear-inspiring name for their master plan is a total scrub.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Spaceman Spiff (profile), 23 Aug 2012 @ 6:05pm

    Gotta love the Eye of Mordor on the logo... :-)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    gorehound (profile), 23 Aug 2012 @ 6:16pm

    Eye of Sauron what a great idea.
    Do you think it is time to have a Campaign where as many people in the USA as possible all use a "Forbidden" Word like Sabotage, Bomb, Assassination, ETC.
    Oh Uh..................1984 Police will now Arrest me for using these Words.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    F!, 23 Aug 2012 @ 10:18pm

    Google = TIA

    If you were following the timeline, the TIA program was 'abandoned' around the same time the CIA & Google signed some mysterious secret agreement. The fact of the matter is that Google is much more effective at collecting, sorting, and profiling data than the CIA could ever hope to be.

    Now, what could the CIA and Google be doing together? No conspiracy here, rest assured your details are safe from the enemy, citizen.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 24 Aug 2012 @ 3:33am

    It can also lead to false conclusions like "guy drives twice or three times a week to an area known for having lots of brothels thus he uses such services frequently" when in reality the grandma of his ex-ex-girlfriend with whom he developed a good friendship and visits often. Not too probable? Maybe. Impossible? No. The authorities in general have shown they can misunderstand information that's in front of them.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Mesonoxian Eve (profile), 24 Aug 2012 @ 3:41am

    This moron in a hurry wants to know why the Eye of Sauran is used in the logo.

    Perhaps a copyright infringement suit bankrupts the organization.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 24 Aug 2012 @ 4:00pm

    Here's some data for the NSA

    SUCK MY BALLS!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Richard Hack (profile), 24 Aug 2012 @ 4:30pm

    The NSA doesn't care about "sense"

    They want power. You get power for hoovering up everything, regardless of whether you can use it to track "terrorists".

    Enough info will be retrievable and useful for the real purposes of such information gathering, i.e., spying on "threats" such as libertarians, anarchists, or anyone who simply doesn't like the way the government is run by corrupt politicians.

    It's also useful for spying on the people who are supposed to do "oversight" on the NSA.

    Anyone with any knowledge of intelligence agencies in any century knows that collecting masses of ostensibly useless information is a basic cornerstone of such agencies. The Russians did it in the 19th century, the Nazis did it in the 20th century, and the US has been doing it over the same time span. So does every other intelligence agency in every other country. The US is just better at it because it can throw more taxpayer money at it - money from the people being spied on.

    The US taxpayers no longer control the US government - if they ever did. They can't stop the US government from starting wars, they can't stop the gov from spying on them, they can't stop the gov for arresting them for no reason and throwing them in a mental institution like that Marine.

    Face it - it's over. You're living in 1984 and have been since well before 1984. And there's nothing the taxpayer can do about it because he's too gutless to take up a gun.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Michael, 24 Aug 2012 @ 6:14pm

    Although their name might not be sinister in appearance, that logo certainly is. One has to wonder what the real deal is with these domestic spying programs. Such a massive undertaking requires an absurd amount of financing and resources. Since we know that there aren't really terrorists hiding everywhere, there must be another explanation/agenda.

    Since life is fleeting and you don't take anything with you when you go (except your deeds), obtaining power is useless, in fact dangerous. I hope that these people are prepared to answer to God in the afterlife for acting like little tyrant overlords, spying on the populace against their wishes, looking to exert their false sense of supremacy. Any institute which acts in secrecy is to be treated with caution, not trust, and so it wouldn't surprise me if Freemasonry was somehow involved in all of this.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    KingofDarkness (profile), 28 Aug 2012 @ 9:57am

    I know I'm late, but...

    Wtf is a part of the military doing collecting data on U.S. citizens? Even if they are a confirmed threat, no part of the military is to be used as domestic police. It is in it's simplest form, in violation of constitutional law.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2012 @ 12:04pm

      Re: I know I'm late, but...

      That law doesn't really have the 'teeth' it used to have, plus it's much easier to get military to follow orders they may not agree with than ordinary police.

      Ok, go round up that town and ship them to guantanamo wouldn't work with police, but with the military, the answer is, "Yes sir, how soon do you want them delivered there, sir?"

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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