
Stasi vs NSA: A comparison of data storage - bionsuba
http://apps.opendatacity.de/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html
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arkem
This is as useful as comparing the number of bullets the US Army has today
with the number of rifles the 1985 Nationale Volksarmee (army of East Germany)
had.

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GoldfishCRM
Why?

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arkem
The article compares the hypothetical amount of data to be stored in a NSA
data center to the records storage area of the Stasi.

That is, a guess at the amount of data one facility of a modern signals
intelligence agency (belonging to a super-power) is being compared to the
amount of record keeping space a cold war era security agency (belonging to a
Soviet client-state) possessed. The two agencies have vastly different
missions (state security versus signals intelligence), operated at vastly
different scales, and in completely different eras. The two facilities being
compared are not at all similar. A large computing facility (probably
processing raw data) is being compared to a large library archive (largely
storing files and documents generated by the agency).

No valid conclusions could possibly be drawn from this comparison. The closest
we could come to a valid conclusion is; if we printed out 5 zettabytes of data
we would have wasted a lot of paper.

Edit: What I'm trying to say is that this is an apple to oranges comparison
made across space and time.

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straight_talk
Different missions? Both have exactly the same mission - keep the current
elite in power at any cost.

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arkem
The National Security Agency is a cryptolgic agency tasked with gathering
foreign signals intelligence and providing information assurance services to
the United States Government (especially the military).

The Ministry for State Security was a secret police / intelligence service
tasked with a broad range of powers focused in keeping the party strong as
evidenced by their motto "Schild und Schwert der Partei" (Sword and shield of
the Party). They were primarily responsible for internal surveillance of
people that were deemed enemies of the party and the personal protection of
party leaders.

It's pretty clear that a catch all secret police / security intelligence
agency is different to a foreign signals intelligence agency.

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straight_talk
Isn't it obvious that the official task of a totalitarian agency can be
different from the actual job it's doing??

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arkem
I am comparing the official missions of the Stasi and NSA which are
significantly different.

If your argument is that the NSA is not acting in accordance to its mission,
or that abuses are taking place, or that the NSA is acting like the Stasi
that's something else entirely, completely separate to what I'm discussing.

I'm pointing out that these are different agencies with different roles and
responsibilities, and trying to draw parallels between an NSA data center and
a Stasi archive is not really useful.

~~~
straight_talk
>> that's something else entirely, completely separate to what I'm discussing.

Aha I see. The NSA and Stasi are collecting vast amounts of data on everybody
living in their countries. Data that was and will be abused to ruin innocent
lives. But you prefer to discuss in this topic something "entirely, completely
separate".

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arkem
This is a discussion on an article that compares an NSA data center to the
Stasi archives. I chose to discuss how I find that comparison fallacious.

I am arguing that the NSA is not like the Stasi. They had different goals,
different authorization, and different modus operandi. You're arguing that the
NSA is bad (because they are like the Stasi). Whether the NSA is bad or not is
orthogonal to my discussion.

To directly answer your reply:

1\. The Stasi doesn't collect vast amounts of anything any more.

2\. Has the NSA used data to ruin innocent lives? Have you any evidence that
they will do so in the future?

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ThomPete
They are comparing information (stasi) with data (NSA).

Thats simply not a very constructive way to look at things.

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angersock
Please explain how you differentiate between those two things.

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arkem
There are a few differing definitions of data and information but in general
it goes like this:

Data is a collection of facts.

Information is data after context or analysis is applied.

A database of phone records is data, a report on the people a target has
called is information.

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ThomPete
Exactly!

They are two very different types of surveillance and especially in this
context they are un-comparable.

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kriro
I think the "most interesting" piece of data the Stasi stored was personal
items with the smell of a person that could be used with dogs.

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Create
...you mean RFID passports with fingerprints?

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adamors
I think @kriro is referring to this
[http://youtu.be/XX8NxgAtHM8?t=5m10s](http://youtu.be/XX8NxgAtHM8?t=5m10s)

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frozenport
Consider the participation rate of the Stasi vs the NSA. Conservative official
records put them at about 3% of the population.

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beloch
Consider it from the position of somebody in "upper management".

1\. Technology lets a NSA employee do orders of magnitude more work than a
Stasi employee.

2\. Every employee may be a traitor or merely overly ambitious, but gains
knowledge of how to evade detection while obtaining privileged information and
taking advantage of it as a side-effect of working for you. As your
organization grows you have to spend a lot of resources on internal policing.

3\. Fewer employees also means fewer potential whistle-blowers.

Even without budgetary constraints, the NSA is well motivated to employ a much
smaller percentage of the population than the Stasi did, assuming they are
equally invasive. The ideal they are probably striving for is a completely
automated NSA that reports only to the glorious leader.

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VladRussian2
>only to the glorious leader

while glorious leader sounds good too, after watching "Dictator" allow me to
correct you - it is "supreme leader". Btw, the supreme leader suggested that
US could have been able to spy on its citizens if US were a dictatorship
instead of democracy. :)

