Is the NSA biting off more data than it can chew?

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 3:53 pm by Fred Clark

Is the NSA biting off more data than it can chew? 2013-06-07T15:53:49-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It’s very disturbing to open the paper one day to learn that the government is collecting every bit of data it can from the phone records of private citizens. And it’s even more disturbing to open the paper the following day to learn that the feds are also snooping through all of our Internet records as well.

Disturbing, if not terribly surprising. (And the fact that all of this is probably — at least technically — legal makes this more disturbing, not less.)

Maybe it’s time we stopped arguing that our personal data is “private” and instead start referring to it as “classified.” Privacy doesn’t seem to garner much respect anymore, but the government still regards “classified” as a sacrosanct category.

The massive scale and scope of this data collection makes this even more disturbing but also, perversely, is somewhat reassuring. What I mean there is that it’s very disturbing to learn that the government is collecting every bit of phone and Internet data it can collect on everyone. But it would be even more disturbing to learn that the government is collecting every bit of phone and Internet data it can collect about you — you personally and you exclusively.

Which brings us to one of the many questions I have about all of this: Are the government agencies collecting this massive undifferentiated ocean of data really capable of putting it to any good use?

“Data mining” has been discussed for decades now, but the reality has never lived up to the hype. A lot of the folks claiming to have mastered the dark arts of data mining are little more than the computing equivalents of diviners with dowsing rods. Sorting and filtering and aggregating the massive flood of data being collected from phone and Internet records is no small task. I’m sure that the Pentagon, the CIA or the NSA has access to the raw computing power needed for such a project, but it requires more than just supercomputers. It also takes top-notch programmers to create the algorithms needed to sort through so much data and to find the signal amongst all that noise. And beyond that, it takes people with the wisdom, experience and know-how to define and recognize the difference between signal and noise — or just to know what they’re looking for. This isn’t like looking for a needle in a haystack, but for a particular piece of hay in a haystack.

I’m not saying that the Pentagon, NSA and CIA are especially incompetent, and therefore that they aren’t capable of sorting through all this data in a meaningful way. I’m suggesting, rather, that no one may be capable of sorting through all this data in a meaningful way.

“HQ is watching everything we do,” one of my co-workers says all the time, pointing nervously up at the CCTV cameras on the ceiling of the store/warehouse.

“HQ is recording everything we do,” I tell him. “No one is watching.”

The company has more than 2,200 stores all over the world, with dozens of cameras in each store, all operating 24/7/365. If something happens in any of those stores, they can go back to look at the CCTV footage to get a better idea of what happened, but it would be impossible for the company to “watch” everything that all of its cameras are recording. It would be pointless even to attempt to do so.

I realize that the NSA is better at this than the retail chain I work for — and that it’s far more intent on collecting and “mining” data. A reader at Andrew Sullivan’s Dish site paints a grim picture of the kind of details that might be traced from mining “metadata” from cell phone records — all of which I’m sure is technologically possible (and more efficient than the old methods of doing the same thing with binoculars, unmarked cars and shoe leather). And Bruce Schneier — who knows more about this stuff than just about anyone — paints a truly frightening picture of the NSA’s ambitious plans for near universal data-mining, including its construction of an “enormous computer facility in Utah to store all this data, as well as faster computer networks to process it all.” These agencies clearly possess the capability to collect and to process huge amounts of data, but that’s still not the same thing as them knowing how or why or what to do with it all.

I don’t agree with some of what David Simon writes in his contrarian post on all of this, but I think he’s right to question whether “the NSA and FBI have their shit together enough” to handle this “vast big-data stream of electronic communication.”

“That is tens of billions of phone calls and for the love of god,” Simon writes. “How many agents do you think the FBI has? How many computer-runs do you think the NSA can do?”

The ugly, vacuous graphic above comes from a snarky post by Matt Yglesias in which he notes that “well-run organizations wouldn’t rely on this kind of garbage in their internal presentations.” But it’s even worse than that, actually — the graphic comes from a PowerPoint presentation. That’s what was leaked, alerting the public to the scope of this massive meta-data collecting effort — “a top secret 41-slide PowerPoint presentation.” I’m willing to accept, in theory, that some massive, secretive, nefarious agency might be capable of meaningfully sifting through all of the vast volume of data the government is now collecting. But it’s hard to reconcile such a theoretically omnicompetent agency with the kind of outfit that would use PowerPoint, or that would regard an MS Office application as something appropriate for “top secret” use.

My point here is not to say, “Don’t worry, they don’t know what they’re doing,” but rather to suggest that because they may not know what they’re doing, we might want to worry differently. A secretive, unaccountable, omnicompetent agency poses one kind of threat to civil liberties. A secretive, unaccountable, *semi-*competent agency poses another.

If the NSA, CIA, et. al., are actually more capable than I suspect of putting all this data to use for “national security” and preventing terrorism and all that, then the much-discussed “debate” about the “balance” between security and privacy really would be an appropriate conversation.

But what if they’re not actually capable of sifting and “mining” all this data? What if they’re simply collecting more data than they’ll ever be able to make sense of? What if those Utah supercomputers wind up being little more than glorified floppy disks filled with the unsearched and unsearchable records of everybody’s phone calls to everybody else?

In that case, we’re talking about agencies which are collecting all this data for little reason other than because they can, without any legitimate “national security” pretext — without any excuse.

class warfare

Previous Post

June 7, 2013

Tune That Name: N-O

Next Post

June 8, 2013 8 years ago: Nabobs of NABA

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many men did Gideon keep from the 32,000?

Select your answer to see how you score.

500 300 200 400