Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit, Every Goddamned Time." -- The Ghoul

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck,
"FOFF" = Felonious Old Fat Fuck,
"COFF" = Convicted Old Felonious Fool,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset,
A/K/A P01135809, A/K/A Dementia Donnie, A/K/A Felon^34,
A/K/A Dolt-45, A/K/A Don Snoreleone

Thursday, March 24, 2016

What the Terror Attacks are Revealing About the Electronic Spies

They seem to be showing that the billions of dollars and pounds consumed by the NSA and GCHQ have been poured down a rathole. For the last fourteen years, those snoops have been telling us that if they have free rein to spy on everyone and use everything, that they can detect the terrorists and their supporting networks.

There's no civil liberties issue with them monitoring what goes on in France and Belgium or Syria.

Where is the evidence that the electronic spies are worth what they have been paid? Where is there proof that the massive data collection, storage and analysis that the NSA has been doing has helps a whit?

5 comments:

AllieG said...

Frederick the Great is credited with the maxim "He who defends everything defends nothing." It seems clear the same applies to spying. Our electronic spies are drowning in ever larger seas of data, wondering why it keeps getting harder to find the needle even as they throw more hay on the stack.

Anonymous said...

Yes and it's always better to find the needle before it gets into the haystack.

Joe said...

The bad guys have adapted. Most recent attacks have been by brothers, spouses, first cousins... They're not using electronic communications at all!

w3ski said...

Terror and Security have become big business. Now we also have Pot as a new business. Industry even.
Perhaps the powers that be might now dream up a new industry for the rest of us also?
w3ski

BadTux said...

Joe, they're using electronic communications, but they're using them to coordinate already-made plans, not to make those plans, and there's so much data being hoovered up by the NSA etc. that they have no way to analyze it all to find those needles in one big frickin' haystack. I work in the data analysis field and finding patterns in a much simpler haystack of data takes a ton of CPU horsepower and iops. There isn't enough CPU horsepower and iops on the planet to do anything useful in real time with that massive pile that the NSA is hoovering, they can use it after the fact to find the connections to take down networks, but usually the terror cell has already blown its cover anyhow by that time. (LIterally).