On NSA Wiretaps
Apr. 30th, 2009 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddywolfI've been meaning to post this for a number of months. Yes, I am behind.
There is a segment of the population that says that having almost all communications monitored makes us safer. After all, say the argumentative, we might get more vitally useful data that way, and that is more important than legality.
My rebuttal: intelligence gathering is about using your precious work hours and workforce to gather and sift through data from likely places. When you have the original program, listening in to people for whom warrants have been obtained, it is like running a good-sized lobster pot, say 8-10 gallons, into a largish colander to get a single bowl of pasta. In other words, its time consuming and wasteful, but you at least narrowed it down to the lobster pot from the bathtub.
The illegal warrantless wiretap program - never forget, it is illegal - is trying to pour the Pacific Ocean into that same sized collander for perhaps, say, pasta for the football team. Yes, we are talking about more pasta, yes for more people, but also we're talking about functionally never actually getting the pasta out.
Which is a better use of your precious intelligence man-hours? I leave it to you to decide. Excuse me, I have a bowl of rotini getting cold.
There is a segment of the population that says that having almost all communications monitored makes us safer. After all, say the argumentative, we might get more vitally useful data that way, and that is more important than legality.
My rebuttal: intelligence gathering is about using your precious work hours and workforce to gather and sift through data from likely places. When you have the original program, listening in to people for whom warrants have been obtained, it is like running a good-sized lobster pot, say 8-10 gallons, into a largish colander to get a single bowl of pasta. In other words, its time consuming and wasteful, but you at least narrowed it down to the lobster pot from the bathtub.
The illegal warrantless wiretap program - never forget, it is illegal - is trying to pour the Pacific Ocean into that same sized collander for perhaps, say, pasta for the football team. Yes, we are talking about more pasta, yes for more people, but also we're talking about functionally never actually getting the pasta out.
Which is a better use of your precious intelligence man-hours? I leave it to you to decide. Excuse me, I have a bowl of rotini getting cold.
