Posted by
glen ep ropella on
Jul 15, 2013; 4:41pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-AP-kerfuffle-tp7583146p7583426.html
Owen Densmore wrote at 07/15/2013 08:47 AM:
> Regardless of opinions on the ethics/legal side, the "collect it all"
> approach seems just impossible for me to grok. Lets suppose you *did* have
> all the data generated on the internet every day for the last 20 years.
> What could you do with it?
I think they're taking the usual approach to large data sets, save it all (or as
much as you can) just in case you find an anomaly you want to study. The point
of having the raw data available is to allow you to engage in hindsight. What
interests me most is not what they _intend_ to do with it, but what they end up
doing with it.
For example, I used to keep every single e-mail I ever received. I started
doing that way before I learned about Eddington typewriters. On several
occasions, I've had reason to go back and mine that data for various things,
including building various bots that could spit out text similar to various
people and spam sources. An interesting tangent is that encryption was a
significant irritant ... even where e-mails were encrypted with my public key. ;-)
The more important question, I think, is how these agencies are organizing the
long-term storage. What schema are they using? How is it indexed? What
storage media do they use? These are the questions that make me want to apply
for a job with the NSA. (BTW, I _did_ apply for a job there as I was finishing
college. I didn't pursue it because I had a good offer from somewhere else. ...
Plus, one of my roommates landed a job there. And he was so perky, sunny, and
patriotic, he creeped me out. He asked why I liked the work of H.R. Giger,
claiming it was too dark and depressing. He actually asked me to take down my
prints ... which I did. [sigh])
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847,
http://tempusdictum.comThere is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and
attempting to make them equal. -- F.A. Hayek
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