I am posting this under humor, in part due to the excellent writing of James Bamford.
Here is a sample of what you will find at: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say):
Today Bluffdale is home to one of the nation’s largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren, with upwards of 9,000 members. The brethren’s complex includes a chapel, a school, a sports field, and an archive. Membership has doubled since 1978—and the number of plural marriages has tripled—so the sect has recently been looking for ways to purchase more land and expand throughout the town.
But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who say little and keep to themselves. Like the pious polygamists, they are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.
Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.
There is enough doom and gloom to keep the movie industry busy through Terminator XXX – The Commodore 128 Conspiracy.
Why am I not worried?
- 70% of all IT projects fail – Odds are better than 50% this is one of them.
- Location – Build a computer center in one of the hottest location in the 48 states. Is that a comment on the planning of this center?
- Technology – In the time from planning to completion, two or three generations of computing architecture and design have occurred. Care to bet on the mixture of systems to be found at this “secret” location?
- 70% of all IT projects fail – Odds are better than 50% this is one of them.
- NSA advances in cryptography. Sure, just like Oakridge was breeched by an “advanced persistent threat“:
Oak Ridge National Labs blamed the incident on an “advanced persistent threat,” (APT) a term commonly used by organizations to imply that the threat was so advanced that they would never have been able to protect themselves, Gunter Ollmann, vice-president of research at Damballa,
Would you expect anyone to claim being the victim of a high school level hack? Do you really think the NSA is going to say its a little ahead, maybe?
- Consider the NSA’s track record against terrorism, revolution, etc. You would get more timely information reading the Washington Post. Oh, but their real contribution is a secret.
- When they have a contribution, like listening to cell phones of terrorists, they leak it. No leaks, no real contributions.
- 70% of all IT projects fail – Odds are better than 50% this is one of them.
- Apparently there is no capacity (unless is is secret) to proof signals intell with human intell. That’s like watching I Love Lucy episodes for current weather information. It has to be right part of the time.
- 70% of all IT projects fail – Odds are better than 50% this is one of them.
What is missing from most IT projects is an actor with technical expertise but no direct interest in the project. Someone who has no motive for CYA on the part of the client or contractor.
Someone who can ask of the decision makers: “What specific benefit is derived from ability X?” Such as the capacity to mine “big data.” To what end?
The oft cited benefit of “making better decisions” is not empowered by “big data.”
If you are incapable of making good business decisions now, that will be true after you have “big data.” (Sorry.)
This is just a way for the military-industrial complex to spend our money. It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs — for the approximately 1 million Americans who have security clearances, and who sit in a darkened room and watch the rest of us through a one-way mirror.
Plato asked, “Who will guard the Guardians?” It has always been a good question, and today it is an excellent question. Who can police the policemen, when the policemen are in a darkened room, and even they don’t know who else is in the room? Who can stand up to their power, when those who blow the whistle on lawbreakers — who briefly turn on the light in the darkened room, in conformance with their oath to defend the U.S. Constitution against all its enemies, foreign *and* domestic — are tortured and held incommunicado indefinitely, as Bradley Manning is at this very minute?
Who can protect the interests of the people, when the protectors themselves are above the law? Who can audit the Pentagon, when according to David Walker (recently the Comptroller General of the U.S.) says that it’s impossible because more than 6,000 different, mutually incompatible accounting systems are used there? Who can apply good sense to defense acquisitions, like this disk farm in Bluffdale, when those who are supposed to provide that oversight — the Congress — are in the pockets of the contractors who sell such things?
The question is not, therefore, “What specific benefit is derived from ability X? Such as the capacity to mine ‘big data.’ To what end?” The question is: “How can we know the answers to such questions?” The only approach that works nowadays is for someone who knows the answer to say it publicly, thus voluntarily offering himself up for crucifixion, as Bradley Manning has (allegedly) done. I grieve for the loss of the America that I grew up in — the one in which it was extremely remarkable that President Eisenhower lied publicly about something, e.g. the U-2 incident.
Comment by Steve Newcomb — April 20, 2012 @ 8:04 am
[…] reasons that should be raised when the NSA Money Trap project […]
Pingback by The wrong way: Worst best practices in ‘big data’ analytics programs « Another Word For It — April 22, 2012 @ 7:07 pm
@Steve – I would not grieve too hard, the America you grew up in was much like the South I remember. The South of my youth was a place where the police did not lie, self-advantage was not the basis for all decisions and the military was respected.
But I grew up to learn the police do lie, that the question isn’t whether self-advantage but whose? and respect for the military is coinage for votes. Even worse, none of that was new. It has always been thus.
Bradley Manning is the grand gesture but it isn’t the one that changes the system. Sure, there has to be a Rosa Parks but recall that Rosa Parks was carefully staged. After months if not years of planning made sure the time was right. There was a young unwed mother just months before who had the same issue. But she was not the right public face for the issue.
The system will be changed by people writing letters to the editor, blogging, voting, calling their representatives, etc.
None of it flashy, none of it dying while you spit out your hate at the oppressors, or manning the barricades. But that’s the problem isn’t it?
None of us wants to be the water than wears down the system. We get tired and no one else cares anyway. Which is why we get the government we deserve.
It will take another ten years before the hysteria over 9/11 calms down and we find other issues to occupy ourselves. But that day is coming. I wonder what sort of government we will deserve at that point?
Comment by Patrick Durusau — April 22, 2012 @ 8:55 pm
[…] NSA Money Trap Patrick Durusau […]
Pingback by Links 4/23/12 « naked capitalism — April 23, 2012 @ 1:47 am