

Intelligence, security and privacy - matan_a
http://www.ditchley.co.uk/conferences/past-programme/2010-2019/2015/intelligence

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bediger4000
This reads very strangely, like maybe the author didn't really understand the
issues, or maybe that many, many editors/censors had their hands on it.

 _Bulk data collection was seen by the agencies as essential to uncover
networks and identify and pursue targets on whom they could then focus. It was
not the same as so-called mass surveillance, though without proper oversight
it could be misused for that purpose._ W. T. F.? "Mass surveillance" and "bulk
data collection" are synonyms in this universe. Only a lawyer could slice
those two phrases thin enough to make them mean different things. The article
is full of contemptible double-talk like that.

 _Now [Intelligence Agencies] had to make a massive effort to try to identity
potential targets who were often hiding in plain sight among the rest of the
population._

Really? Really? Which US residents/visitors/vacationers, other than the
original 20 9/11 conspirators are or were "hiding in plain sight"? All those
lamers that the US FBI has almost-but-not-quite entrapped into heinous
terrorism charges? Najibullah Zazi, who was so incompetent that they found him
posting about how to turn beauty supplies into bombs after he miserably failed
to do so?

The whole thing reeks of some kind of elitism that is so rarefied, so high
handed, that I can't even really believe someone would be able to write it
down in 2015, much less actually believe it.

Crap, crap, and more crap.

