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| NSA and Big Data Problem |
It is a known fact that the National Security Agency has tapped detailed phone calling records from the country's wireless carriers and has access to user data from Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Skype, Yahoo, YouTube etc. as part of its infamous data gathering program called Prism. The emails stored on the cloud, the files, videos and photos continuously being uploaded, the online chats and conversations, and any other form of files, documents shared on the internet is now under the lens of the NSA.
However, in this era of Big Data, where every single individual has the potential to generate far more digital footprint than before, it has become a tedious task to analyze the data produced by billions of such individuals. The NSA is collecting all this data, and as a result, it has become increasingly difficult for the agency to pick up a potential signal alert from heaps of information and 'noise'. Noise here refers to the data which is of an irrelevant nature and amounts to large proportions in the total Big Data collected.
The reduction in storage costs has led to a tremendous increase in the generation of Big Data. Notwithstanding the privacy concerns, it has increased the workload on a spy. Big Data has created a big problem for the NSA, in that it is now an extremely arduous occupation of deciphering a signal drowned in a sea of noises.
More data necessarily does not always mean a higher degree of accuracy, as the increase in data is mostly due to an increase in the noise, or unnecessary information. The amount of data is increasing by about 2.5 quintillion bytes per day, but it is also observed that in more cases than one, the amount of useful information is next to nothing. This leads to an obvious inference that the amount of noise generated is dangerously high. It will hence require huge efforts, perseverance and of course, more expensive technological tools for the NSA to sift through the Big Data in quest of potential signals.
It now becomes a question up for an open discussion as to whether the mass surveillance undertaken by the NSA in the Big Data era might make the ordinary citizen less vulnerable to such attacks on privacy rights, or there may be some scope of dealing with the Big Data issue and figuring an efficient way out for the agency.
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