The NSA is collecting large amounts of data from all of us without warrants and has no reasonable efficient way of examining this data to approach maximum value. I thought all things wiretapping in this story were old news. For the record: I hate it. I feel it’s fallen far past overreach and become a clear threat to any privacy of American citizens. In addition, I take issue with the amount of data they’ve deemed necessary for each wiretapping authorization. But all of this is old news. It’s been law that has been passed repeatedly by congresses and Presidential Administrations blue and red.
One: We, the people voted for politicians that supported it, over and over again.
Even though our country’s federal government has always been illegal or unethical snoopers for years (See MLK and Malcolm X) since 2001 we (the American people) have had 3 Presidential elections and more Presidential elections where we have elected congress people and Bush and Obama who all support Patriot Act extensions largely to extend the ability to wiretap us and collect customer data from communications companies. The Patriot Act eavesdropping (parts of which were formerly called Carnivore and Predator when rejected by congress pre-9/11/2001)
Two: This data is being collected in a ham handed vacuum cleaner fashion
Remember the story about: NSA eavesdropping on June 14, 2006, from 60 minutes (embed disabled)
Also this on May 9, 2007 from PBS’s frontline on NSA Listening Rooms found by AT&T Engineers
My main issue with all this is that it’s just a monster dump of data being shovelled into NSA officials possession. All these large amounts of data is not secure (no such thing) and they don’t have very efficient ways of analyzing this data. Like Stop and Frisk and DNA swabs, this is data collection on a level that allows our private information to be collated (say Dr. visits, personal indiscretions, etc.) and unearthly magnitude that prevents real meaningful analysis and police/investigation work to be done. The poor data analysis was a point from NSA whistleblower’s Tom Drake’s exposure on NSA wiretapping in this story from 2011 about his 2007 indictment: