The absolute scariest thing about this NSA scandal....
Is that people are simply not paying attention to the possibilities this dataset represents.
First off, the metadata is powerful in and of itself at rooting out "evil" through finding out who is talking to who:
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/
But it is far deeper than that given the hoovering and assembling of all the rest of the data into one place at such a lavish cost of our tax dollars. If it involves emails, texts, facebook and all that crap correlated with financials. Wow!
Consider your life for a moment. You're busy all the time, controlled by a million little random events. A decision here, forgetting something you're supposed to do over there, idle chatter with a friend while you're not fully paying attention, tasks you perform while you're actually fretting about something else. Day after day after day.
We are all controlled by randomness and innundated with data and we've developed psychological defenses to deal with it. Most of them involve conveniently forgetting (or rationalizing away) things you don't want to really have to face about yourself.
You like yourself in no small part because you selectively shape your self image -- picking the good parts and ignoring the bad. Ever been surprised at yourself when you open up a journal you wrote 20 years ago and start reading? Your personality evolves -- the same person truly never crosses the same river twice.
Now consider how your life appears in a completely impartial tabulation of data using the things already linked to the NSA data vacuum over a decade (and counting from now on).
It's all going to be in there guys, stuff that you're not even psychologically capable of admitting about yourself. Parts of your life that you think are over are going to be part of "your permanent record." Damn, I guess that Principal Walters was right about that!
And it knows stuff about you that you don't want to know or think about. Perhaps it's that person you listen to through force of personality whose advice is not always in your best interest. Maybe that boyfriend/girlfriend your friends were warning you about. Perhaps it's that you're nowhere near as charitable as you'd like to think you are. Perhaps you've been insensitive towards friends. Perhaps you went through a bad stretch in life and you got by it and reinvented yourself and you're just not that person anymore.
But it is all there, in the record -- officially only available by a warrant if you become a threat to national security.
But it is awe inspiring to me -- I would imagine that a perusal of the stored NSA data relevant to my life would probably teach me a few things about myself that I don't know (or worse, even believe differently about myself) as you consider the data impartially.
Think about that power sitting in those NSA databases for just a minute. The ability to choose a person, study them for a while and then be able to argue about the core of their essence with details from their life that they may well have forgotten.
And then try to tell me that there aren't people who are interested in using it for purposes that have little to do with terrorism. Convince me that that data will NEVER be misused, when it is obviously so powerful.
The metadata is cute, the rest is totally frightening.
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--Thank You for distilling this historic invasion of our private lives in a way that everyone should be able to relate to--for detailing how this type of data can be used to create a collapsed picture of "you that is not you." Anyone who is familiar with how this is done in courtrooms should be able to get the message (finally?)
"Think about that power sitting in those NSA databases for just a minute. The ability to choose a person, study them for a while and then be able to argue about the core of their essence with details from their life that they may well have forgotten." Exactly!
K & RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
