NSA’S MASSIVE DATA-TRAWLING METHODS
(…means it has to gather a lot of trash just to find one terror-nugget it’s looking for)

Snowden’s revelations about NSA’ s long standing secret surveillance and data collection operations seems to have caused everyone extreme heartburn. It really shouldn’t have. Granted, knowing a super-secret government agency is actively snooping into everyone’s communications activities raises everyone’s nervousness quotient, but contrary to what so many seem to want to believer, it’s not because the government is engaged in a malign conspiracy to destroy our rights and liberties.

It’s really a case of an overwhelming development in communications technology, especially over the past ten years. Because of that NSA has been forced to adopt a method similar to that of deep water fishing trawlers. That is, otter boarding trawling.

With that method fishing trawlers go out and bring in tons of fishies for our tables, by attaching two otter-boards to the opening of a huge bag net they drag behind them. This keeps the opening of that net wide open, allowing it to scoop up everything in its path. It literally “vacuums” everything into it as it moves through the water.

The problem with that method, however, is that it scoops up a massive amount of “trash fish” in the process, along with the few “high value” ones around. Often the volumes of trash fish outnumber the value ones by a factor of 4 to 1. Worse yet, besides barely covering costs, this method can very quickly denude fishing grounds, destroying the fishermen’s means of earning a living.

Of course smart-thinking fishermen and their government regulators soon figured out there was a way around that problem. By re-designing the shape and dimensions of those nets’ apertures trash fish were able to pass through the net, leaving only the high value ones in it. Since trash fish are also the feedstock for those high value ones, by preventing their depletion thus stabilizing their populations, this also maintains those of the high value ones as well. Thus fishermen make better profits without destroying the marine environment upon which they depend.

In many respects therefore NSA’s massive data-trawling methods resemble that of otter board trawling, but without the improved net apertures. What this means is that it has to haul in a lot of trash, just to be able to spot one of those terror-nuggets it has been tasked to look for.

So how can it differentiate between “trash” and those “nuggets” it is looking for? Unfortunately, the pace of technology, and the rapid rate of development in applications make it an almost impossible task. We need to keep in mind this is an extremely fluid environment, constantly changing and shifting with every communications toy put out on the market.

Yes, NSA certainly must have developed, and continues to do so, new ways of sifting through that volume of trash it is forced to collect to accomplish its mission…that is…  keeping our country safe from terrorist assaults but, unfortunately, state-of-the-art in technology doesn’t give it many options to change the methods it uses to do that.

Still, while it can probably tweak and refine its data “triage” systems, it is still faced with what to do with all that data trash in its banks. The volume of which is probably greater than that of all the oceans combined. About the only answer that comes to mind might be for it to change the length of time it holds on to it all.

 If it were to set up a scheduled “dumping” system where say, after 90 days, data in the trash category would be purged from its banks, that would probably go a long way toward alleviating much of the concerns and heartburn folks are having about its methods. Meanwhile it could better focus on its primary tasks.

As for Mr. Snowden, given his recent travel patterns, we should seriously question whether his “whistle blowing” motives were as pure as he has maintained. Given his lack of any kind of academic credentials, to warrant being hired at that level of compensation and clearance the real question this episode raises is…how is it that neither the government contractor which hired him nor the NSA seemed to have had a clue as to his potential for throwing a monkey wrench in its operations? It is a puzzlement.

Listening to some of his own “key-words” scattered among the ideological blather he’s spouted since he ran off, it’s clear he is of a generation with no real understanding of how government operates, especially ours. We have apparently spawned not just a generation of vipers, but a bunch of ignorant ones besides, and that, is a most depressing thought.  

CENTURION

Note: This is a corrected issue in which we inadvertently misnamed a government contractor that was not involved, so we have corrected this issue.