Data and Information

 

 

"Many times it takes a mountain of data to reveal a pebble of valuable information"

 

 

Hey, it is no big shakes. It is just a wee bit of data mining. Yesterday, the President himself told the nation the NSA is just collecting data on "patterns" - they will not listen to any phone calls or read any e-mail. In fact, we have even learned a new word that can be used when playing Scrabble - metadata. For those who have not read enough about what metadata means, it is simply data about data. No big deal.

Just how much data is being collected on the poor unsuspecting citizens of Gotham City and beyond. Oh, just a tad. The new NSA facility (which the government tried so hard to keep under wraps) occupies a paltry one million square feet and when finished this fall, will be able to store (ready for this) - up to five zettabytes of data. That is a number that has more zeros in it than stars in the sky (not quite). In other words, one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62.5 billion iPhones.

Many people think that most spy craft is listening in on a conversation and hearing something like "Tomorrow at 8:00, we will attack at 4th and Main". That would be a case where data and information are equal. In real life, much of intelligence gathering is collecting data - reams and reams of data. What most intelligence professionals will do is sift through that data and look for patterns, trends, or anything that can lead to a morsel of valid information.

By the way, we all do this. After observing things in our neighborhood, we know what kind of cars people drive, when they leave for work, what day they cut their grass, and even if they wear shorts Saturdays. Without being aware of it, we are constantly collecting data on our spouse, our kids, our co-workers, our neighbors. Police do it all the time - sometimes it may get confused with "profiling". Even our dogs to it. They are constantly watching us, looking for patterns in our behavior that will somehow affect them.

Some in Congress have also told us not to worry about this data collection as if we have done nothing wrong, we have nothing to worry about. I understand - kind of like the IRS right now. People who have done nothing wrong are singled out for mistreatment by the IRS. My feeling is this - when people find out the breadth and depth of this intrusion on our civil rights, most won't feel very comforted. Every keystroke, every phone call, every purchase, every everything on everybody will reside in Utah.

The thing I find the most fascinating about this issue, is how total it is. In 1984, there was still ways to hide from Big Brother. In our Brave New World, hiding is not an option. We are now all amoebas, swimming around in our daily lives, being observed 24x7x365 by the federal microscope.