NSA Wiretapping – Followup

Wired had a couple of interesting articles about the NSA wiretapping program. While I recommend both of them, there were a couple of points that call into question the value of the NSA’s wiretapping and data mining activities.

In NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records of U.S. Citizens they discuss some of the claims made by Russell Tice, the NSA whistle blower:

“This is garnered from algorithms that have been put together to try to just dream-up scenarios that might be information that is associated with how a terrorist could operate,” Tice said. “And once that information gets to the NSA, and they start to put it through the filters there . . . and they start looking for word-recognition, if someone just talked about the daily news and mentioned something about the Middle East they could easily be brought to the forefront of having that little flag put by their name that says ‘potential terrorist’.”

Now, compare this to what is discussed in CIA Spy Enlisted Son to Collect Espionage Debts, Feds Say, where they quote the following coded message sent to Russian agents:

SUBJECT LINE: Hola Nancy!
Hello Sweety! How are you? I’m good. Sorry for taking so long to write to you…you know how work is and all. Any7ways, things are good. It looks like I will still be able to go on that vacation! I will keep you updated on that though. I am very much looking forward to it, and to seeing you again! Well hon, I just thought I’d say “hi” since I had the time!

As I mentioned previously, it is difficult to see how widespread data mining is going to be a useful tool in the fight against terrorists.

How do you build algorithms that distinguish innocent conversations (from people with nothing to hide) from the carefully coded messages sent by terrorists?

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?