Just a short follow-up here: two more articles that relate to my observations on the unending revelations of data collection, surveillance, etc. by our friendly No Secrets Anymore agency…
The first article (here) relates how NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used a common “webcrawler” software to comb through the NSA databases and download thousands of pages of classified information. The first thing I thought when reading this was “WTF! – How was this even possible inside what should be one of the most secure networks on the planet??” Turns out that even super-secret networks have rollout delays in deploying critical network monitoring software… (Snowden ran the webcrawler from a Hawaii field office instead of NSA central in Fort Meade, MD…)
The other article (here) is an odd clarification on how much metadata the NSA has been gathering on domestic phone calls – now we are told about 20% of all landline calls made, not the close to 100% that was earlier believed. In addition, we are told that not much bulk collection of cellphone calls is currently occurring, due to a restriction on collection of location information (which is normally embedded in the cellphone call record metadata). This raises an interesting question: since I doubt that many would-be terrorists install a landline (with the requisite time and details for commissioning) in order to make clandestine calls – what is the use of any landline collection (in bulk terms)? Isn’t this just a large waste of taxpayer time and funds that really will have no useful purpose?
What one may take away from these observations is that policy often gets in the way of efficient application of a process – in some cases allowing security leaks, and in other cases seriously diluting the desired effect of a surveillance plan. Many of the same issues that confront commercial entities also plague our (and others) governmental agencies…
Parasam 