Simply Irresistible

The time has come to seriously consider the implications of all the data the US government is collecting and consuming about its citizens.   For the first time in all of history, a government can peer into the private communications and by deflection the private thoughts of its citizens.  First, with the full neural net of information of interconnections between people, it must now be assumed to be known the full interconnectivity of persons of note.  Not just potential terrorists but politicians, would-be politicians, authors, commentators, newscasters, executives, even pundits, and more are swept up by this net.    If you have “arrived” you are known and fully analyzed.  Your habits are known, your pleasures are known, and so also are your friends.    A little background comes first.

About Edward Snowden, the now high profile leak in the NSA snooping scandal.  It is not what he did at this point, it is about what information he carried with him.  This fellow seems clever enough to have covered himself with tools to help his future situations. Of course, a nefarious host government will smoke them out, much to Edward's displeasure.   The other problem is how many others (i.e. NSA contractors) have done or or doing the exact same thing: harvesting information.  This is a serious issue.  With the data mining capacity of various programs available to the NSA, any operative, with appropriate keywords, can uncover the identity of any secretive email senders, and to whom they have communicated.  One simply does not need the secret email address, one can inversely deduce the identity.  This is dangerous - really dangerous.  Folks can read this post all day long, uncover my email, check on what I'm up to, but I'm basically a nobody, probably uninteresting to anyone.  But we are now at the point where big time secrets can be completely uncovered, no matter how disguised the sender may think he/she is covered.   The moral of this story is to use serious encryption software in all communications if you really want them private. Even the NSA, with all its computing power and expertise, has trouble decrypting, for example, RSA encrypted messages.

What about other countries?  Are citizens of England, France, Germany, Russia also under similar scrutiny.  The software is there; the need is perceived; the knowledge is desired; the will to thwart whatever is rampant.   All you need are ultra high capacity servers and the access to the data streams. Politicians are fundamentally nosy.

This cheap war waged by the terrorists is having far reaching consequences.  Those people know what to do and are likely doing it.  (Just think a moment or two and you can envision easy countermeasures.)  More revelations are coming.  Make no doubt.

 Let us look beyond the banal and proceed directly to what can happen and what will happen.   Or should I say, what could be.  A rule of thumb is that what could be soon becomes what is.   

You must think of unlimited computing power; you must think of unlimited software algorithms to detect even the most remote interconnectivity.  It exists.

You have an immense about of data; you have virtually unlimited computing resources; you have software engineering that can data-mine virtually any inquiry.  What is possible?  Look at an ordinary insurance salesman.  With just the name, phone number and email address, you can soon know all clients, their conditions, their driving records, and their medical issues.  Next, look at a corporate executive.  With the information available, you can soon know who are his/her favorite contacts via emails and phone numbers, what he/she thinks about, and what are the anticipated corporate developments.  Now think of political contenders.  You can gather up who are the main contributors, what they envision, what you envision, and importantly what strategies and tactical moves you plan.   Now move on to the higher chain of public servants.   That’s the easy stuff. 

This said, perhaps you’ve concealed your identity though alternative, i.e. secret,  email accounts, or purchased phones, not in any way connected to you, so you think.  This is exactly where the most subtle data mining can occur.  Simply by examining the data records, it becomes possible to determine though the network of contacts, the contents of the messages, and so on until an educated guess can determine the originator of the messages.  The massive database can help with identification.  This type of analysis, mathematically called inverse analysis, is most interesting, most devastating and most subtle.  It is possible, and you can assume it is applied.    It can provide competitors with a massive advantage at all levels, even at the highest levels of government. 

  

This kind of data mining is simply irresistible.