Deja Vu Definitions

This might sound familiar to you "That depends on what the meaning of is is."

If not, here's a little US recent history for you...

Aspen Public Radio is great, they do broadcasts of all sorts of local events and this morning it was a panel from the Aspen Institute Security Forum.

A very impressive panel.

Adm. Dennis Blair (Ret.), Former Director of National Intelligence

Amb. John Negroponte, Former Director of National Intelligence; Vice
Chairman, McLarty Associates

MODERATOR: Barton Gellman, Contributing Editor At Large, TIME

The topic was "Mission Accomplished? Has the Intelligence Community Connected All the Dots?"

Which, of course was the one question no-one answered. What everyone centered on was the NSA and Prism and of course things got a little bit like Ionesco.. since I was only listening on the radio I have no idea who was saying what but the absurdity was not lost because if *any* one of these guys said this it would be equally abstruse.

"I think you're misusing the word 'collect'..storing under a court order is an entirely different thing... "

No, not really, you're making a request which can't be refused and you're crunching all that data. Privacy at that point is moot. You're in the hands of the analyst. 

Having just listened how arcane our computer system is when figuring out the Army payroll this does not make me feel confident. In fact it makes me feel pretty apprehensive. Oddly I don't mind personal information being spread around like marmalade in a Agatha Christie breakfast scene. What I do mind is how someone might misinterpret that data and shower me with the full force of the Patriot Act .

It's not that I distrust the Government it's that I have no confidence in the Government's ability to be human. Especially when you have the people in charge of all that data crunching getting all fussy about the difference between "collect" and "store".

The big driver behind this (as far as I can tell from the Forum- since it is constantly repeated) is that "if companies are gathering this data for their marketing why can't we collect it for intelligence purposes?"

Simple answer, because trying to sell me a viagra is very different than renditioning me to a bottomless pit. I get ads for viagra all the time. I'm not in the market for it. I will never be in the market for it. The charitable conclusion is that data hasn't been analyzed correctly. What happens when the analysis goes awry with the NSA? Do I then get an overnight delivery of an orange jumpsuit and a "ride" to Guantanamo?

Here's the difficult part, I believe in the need for "intelligence". I believe that the meta data can lead to stopping real and present dangers to civilians. But damn, the way it's being parsed? No, that I have no faith in whatsoever. It's an Art and there are very few Artists who thrive in a bureaucratic environment.

In fact I'd hazard a guess that there isn't an Artist alive who would make it through an HR interview.

The other recurring themes at the Security Forum are that the sequester is squeezing the intelligence budget and that you lose a vital element of secrecy whenever you have oversight. Great, less money, less oversight, more data...and absolutely no answer to "have we connected the dots?" Normally, if the question isn't answered it's because the answer isn't one you want to hear.

If you want to watch some of this live it's being streamed by aspeninstitute.org