NSA Wiretapping – Better than on-line ads?
Recent news about the NSA’s wiretapping program doesn’t come as much of a surprise. We knew they were doing wiretaps. What was surprising was the scale: they wanted to monitor everyone and everything. It’s hard to imagine that they will obtain useful information from such a broad-based approach.
Consider on-line advertising. There are a number of very large companies doing ad placement on the web. These companies have loads of personal information about us, extensive data mining tools, and years of experience trying to predict our interests and behavior.
And the result? Most of these ads are so ineffective that they are only worth around $0.00001 each.
Additionally, unlike the terrorists, most of us are not trying to hide our interests/behavior. So you would expect the results for the NSA to be even worse.
Now this comparison may not be fair (I’d love your feedback on this) but it makes me wonder how the NSA is going to get much value from this program. A lead on a potential terrorist that’s only worth $0.00001?
Posted: January 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Privacy | Tags: data mining, NSA, on-line advertising, wiretaps | 2 Comments »
I’m even more curious to hear how they are parsing all this information (i.e. the processes for flagging something), if and how they are using the vast quantities of metadata being created around the web, and how they are going to keep track of it all as disparate stores of information are brought together.
We will probably never get those answers, and in the interests of national security that’s could be perceived as a good thing. But behind the scenes, there will likely be a whole lot of data duplication to sort through, and ‘leads’ will likely be obscured through other measures. Why wouldn’t someone dangerous use ‘Google-bombing’ as counterintelligence?
Your points are well made. Parsing and correlating the disparate information sources presents daunting challenges. Some sources will be easy to deal with, others…not so much.
Of further concern, is what happens when they get something wrong? Does the correlation become self-fulfilling? Do they have the tools to rollback any changes? Or to continually reevaluate whether their assumptions are still valid?
Your other point, about hiding your activities through “Google-Bombing,” is even more interesting. Up to now, this technique has been used to call attention to something. The idea that it can be used to hide things is worth some thought.
Ponder this, I will.