Why METADATA Matters - Relational Databases

[Occam's Razor]

To most of us, the data gathered with PRISM and other programs seems an innocuous jumble of surface data.

If it were just some analysts pouring over raw data and tables, reading reports of keyword triggers etc, I would be slightly less worried.

However, with the use of powerful 3-D graphic interface relational databases, this data can begin to reveal incredibly detailed pictures of your movements and associations, without ever having to read a word of your email, or listen to a second of a call.

 

[PerfectStorm]

That first picture reminds me of the movie "Up".

 

[Goshin]

yeah, that's part of the point... they can analyze you to the point of knowing you better than your spouse does.


If I trusted the government this might not bother me as much....


... but trusting the government is clearly a sign of mental illness!

 

[Thoreau72]

Well, they have not been sitting idly by, that's for sure. DARPA hard at work.

3 dimensional modeling is way beyond my skill level... :roll: The potential is kinda scary, like Minority Reports.

 

[Occam's Razor]

Well, they have not been sitting idly by, that's for sure. DARPA hard at work.

3 dimensional modeling is way beyond my skill level... :roll: The potential is kinda scary, like Minority Reports.

This was posted on another thread, hope he doesn't mind that I reposted it here, but illustrates the interest gov't has in minute bits of data...

As I posted before I worked in one of the 50 largest computer centers in the world. In 1993 when I retired our center showed $66 million of computing and telecommunications equipment on the DOE inventory which was our responsibility. Our center had 18,500 sq. ft. of floating floor space. Our power bill was over half a million dollars a year payable to the TVA. Our center required 350 tons of refrigeration for cooling. We had installed Oak Ridge's first supercomputer in 1985...the Cray XMP/24. I only point out this trivia to make a point. All our idle time as far back as the 1960's was used by the government to study things about the American citizens, their opinions, their ailments, law suits against prime contractors for the government, effects of pollution, effects of extended exposure to toxicity and radioactivity, public opinions concerning everything from breakfast bacon to how many believed in a hereafter. On Monday mornings after a weekend it took two men hours to load the multi-copy printed output into vans to be delivered to the DOE headquarters.

After J Edgar Hoover was caught placing a state-of-the-art, circa 1965 tape recorder under the bed in a motel room where Martin Luther King had scheduled an extra-marital rendevous anyone who doesn't realize the government not only knows what you do.....it knows what you think, really should review modern technology.