Terry Connell writes of liberal criticism the NSA’s “metadata” collection efforts:
Progressives rightly call these climate science deniers Luddites with good reason. But they should be careful that the term does not boomerang against them as they take on the NSA’s metadata telephone record collection program.
And continues to extol the virtues of our “new data analytic science” this way:
The core of scientific method involved hypotheses tested against well-designed samples or “focus groups.” Trial and error and retrial prevailed because that was the best we could do. In terms of intelligence gathering, we spied on people based on suspicions that prompted us to check them out. We looked for the needle in the haystack as best we could — essentially, on our hands and knees.
But now digital science has progressed to the point where we can actually capture the “whole haystack” in its most minute parts. When we do that, the needle just sticks out like a sore thumb. We can see the whole chess board and all the possible moves at once. That’s why Big Blue can now match the world’s best grand masters.
Is Deep Blue a quantum computer?
I thought not.
It isn’t “new data analytic science” to take a known phone number and track incoming and outgoing calls from that number.
Signals intelligence (tracking and intercepting electronic communications) dates from the Boer War in 1900. The British were the only ones broadcasting. Made the task of interpretation much easier.
Nor is Starting with the Needle a new data strategy.
I am interested in advances in data analytic techniques.
But that doesn’t require repeating the mindless hype that “big data” is mystically different from existing data analysis techniques.
And I would be careful about the “dots” that get connected.
On the most recent high alert:
To CNN National Security Contributor Frances Fragos Townsend, the timing of the prison breaks and increased intelligence chatter building up to the end of Ramadan signaled heightened al Qaeda activity that required precautionary steps in response.
…
“These seem like dots that ought to be connected,” said Townsend, a former homeland security and anti-terrorism adviser to the Bush administration. “You can figure out later whether or not you were right.” (Prison breaks part of heightened security) (emphasis added)
Here is the scary thought, “You can figure out later whether or not you were right.”
I guess if you aren’t a regular target of police sweeps/surveillance, etc. that may not bother you over much.
It should.
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