
Drowning in Information: NSA Revelations from 262 Spy Documents - severine
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/07/drowning-in-information-nsa-revelations-from-262-spy-documents/
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ianhawes
The 262 "Spy Documents" are actually from an internal newsletter called "SID
Today".

While the newsletter itself is classified, my understanding is it's
distributed to everyone in the agency, from HR to the security guards.

The articles that proclaim the NSA is "drowning in information" are not
specific. They're not from an Inspector General or other internal review.

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cerrelio
This is the reason why I don't fear government surveillance as much as
corporate surveillance. The government simply can't process all the data they
collect. And the value of obtaining information from the data can be highly
variable.

Corporate data collection and analysis efforts are optimized for least
cost/highest return. They really don't care about individuals as much as they
do classes/tranches of people. However, the most concerning part is when
corporations will pass on, willingly or unknowingly, their trade secrets to
the government to improve the latter's techniques.

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pg314
> The government simply can't process all the data they collect.

They don't need to. They can focus their attention on high value targets. You
and I might be low value targets and safe from surveillance (for now), but
that doesn't mean the surveillance of high value targets doesn't affect us. As
a thought experiment, imagine a world where an unscrupulous president uses the
NSA to snoop on the opposition...

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webmaven
Now imagine an unscrupulous NSA Director mining through years of accumulated
data to _retroactively_ snoop on US Presidential candidates' past behavior...

Heck, why stop at the top? I'm sure digging up dirt on current Senators and
Congressional representatives would be useful too.

