Eugene Robinson had a column in today's Union Tribune: NSA's misguided mission to know everything | UTSanDiego.com:
Eugene complains that the NSA "keeps" too much of the data collected --and keeps it too long. There is another side to that story. Data storage is very inexpensive today. Sorting through data to determine what to keep and what to "throw away" is expensive and time consuming.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
NSA Spied on Prominent Muslim Americans
I saw this article in today's Union Tribune by Stephen Braun of Associated Press. It says that NSA apparently spied on some Muslim Americans. Daily Progress:
This could be embarrassing to the US and stir up even more animosity with Muslim countries. I wonder if this is taken out of context. Now, I think, NSA needs to come clean and "balance" the announcement by showing statistics on how many Jewish Americans, Methodist Americans, Presbyterian Americans, Confucian Americans, Catholic Americans, Buddhist Americans etc they have "spied on"... If, in fact, these were the only 5 Americans spied upon, it could show a bias or a problem. However, as I suspect there are thousands of other Americans spied upon, maybe the problem isn't just related to Muslim Americans.
On the other hand --NSA wasn't supposed to be "spying" on any Americans within the USA without appropriate judicial approval.
This could be embarrassing to the US and stir up even more animosity with Muslim countries. I wonder if this is taken out of context. Now, I think, NSA needs to come clean and "balance" the announcement by showing statistics on how many Jewish Americans, Methodist Americans, Presbyterian Americans, Confucian Americans, Catholic Americans, Buddhist Americans etc they have "spied on"... If, in fact, these were the only 5 Americans spied upon, it could show a bias or a problem. However, as I suspect there are thousands of other Americans spied upon, maybe the problem isn't just related to Muslim Americans.
On the other hand --NSA wasn't supposed to be "spying" on any Americans within the USA without appropriate judicial approval.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Private Data Brokers Know Too Much About You
Al Lewis, columnist for Wall Street Journal, pointed out in this article that we should not trust owners of these huge databases.
Private Data Brokers Know Too Much About You - WSJ:
The Federal Trade commission just released their report on data brokers. I agree with the recommendations completely -- they are a good first step.
I think that the law should be expanded to cover more than just data brokers like Axiom. It should also include every company that maintains a database that holds personally identified data. That data includes magazine subscriptions, loyalty cards, tolling data, credit card sales, library book borrowing etc.
Private Data Brokers Know Too Much About You - WSJ:
The Federal Trade commission just released their report on data brokers. I agree with the recommendations completely -- they are a good first step.
I think that the law should be expanded to cover more than just data brokers like Axiom. It should also include every company that maintains a database that holds personally identified data. That data includes magazine subscriptions, loyalty cards, tolling data, credit card sales, library book borrowing etc.
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