

US National Security Agency 'is surveillance leviathan' - tareqak
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23669003

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w_t_payne
There is one aspect of this NSA story that was bothering me -- I could not
figure out what all of this data collection was for. The design and scope of
the system does not seem to be consistent with it's (nominal) anti-terrorism
purpose, and that nagged at my mind for the longest time.

I think I now have a guess, a hypothesis that seems reasonable. If it is true,
it would actually be pretty cool, and whilst it does not make the intrusive
surveillance any less sinister, it at least provides an explanation for the
enormity of it's breadth and scope.

The security services are tasked with protecting the nation from a wide
variety of threats, ranging from hostile foreign powers to individuals
motivated by emergent, unpredictable terrorist ideologies -- and everything in
between. Potentially malicious actors that are already known to us can be
monitored -- but a far harder problem is posed by "lone wolves" \--
individuals and small groups motivated to commit atrocities by any one of a
swathe of destructive ideologies. As advanced technologies become cheaper and
more widespread, the power that an individual has to commit mayhem increases
dramatically. As a result, the security services desperately need a way to
identify these people in advance -- before they commit an atrocity. This
requires an understanding of human behaviour that we simply do not yet
possess.

My hypothesis is this: It is possible that this all-encompassing system
surveillance is actually a social science experiment on a grand scale -- an
attempt to understand human behaviour -- or at least, understand it well
enough that we can identify in advance (and gently dissuade) those who might
otherwise, left to their own devices, be inclined to commit atrocities.

As well as an experiment in social science, this is also an experiment in
political science, since it is a study of ideology, albeit extreme ideology.
Hence the overwhelming need for secrecy to hide the political dynamite.

Just some idle speculation.

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tareqak
PDFs from the article:

1\. NSA memorandum
[http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/speeches_testimonies/2...](http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/speeches_testimonies/2013_08_09_the_nsa_story.pdf)

2\. Fighting cyber crime and protecting privacy in the cloud
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/studiesdownload....](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=EN&file=79050)

3\. BULK COLLECTION OF TELEPHONY METADATA UNDER SECTION 215 OF THE USA PATRIOT
ACT
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7502...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750210/administration-
white-paper-section-215.pdf)

