What Medical Tests Should Teach Us About the NSA Surveillance Program 107
First time accepted submitter Davak writes "In many ways finding the small amount of terrorists within the United States is like screening a population of people for a rare disease. A physician explains why collecting excessive data is actually dangerous. Each time a test is run, the number of people incorrectly identified quickly dwarfs the correct matches. Just like in medicine, being incorrectly labelled has serious consequences."
well duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
the NSA is not concerned about infringing on people's rights and civil liberties. if we are going with medical analogies, i think the NSA would rather amputate than treat an infection.
Ultimately, the same motivation (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether excessive medical tests or excessive surveillance, the minions happily promote it to ensure their job security. If the patient or the society suffers, well, that's okay. Perhaps a bit regrettable, but okay.
Ultimately, a society that strenuously promotes competition also engenders a mercenary attitude. So, you see, the excesses of Wall Street are not that far removed from the excesses of the NSA, or Microsoft, to pick but a very few examples.
Re:Slashdot Propaganda Machine Working Overtime (Score:5, Interesting)
Where's the "-1: conspiracy theorist" option?
Re:Then what do you do then? (Score:4, Interesting)
Using the US Government's attitude to pre-9/11 is not very fair. They ignored the evidence because they figured that perhaps there would be some hijacking or some fairly minor bombing. They were caught by surprise because they were complacent, but that doesn't mean that they lacked the information to know exactly who was responsible.
I'm not at all surprised they had the information that fact. There were likely people in the CIA and FBI trying to get someone to listen in the upper management levels for years. Now those executives wanted answers and they finally listened.
The only thing that happened with 9/11 is that the government got an attitude adjustment. George W. Bush wanted to completely ignore the Middle East, back in the day. Then the Middle East came to him.
Why is it that people want to see intricate plots in something that can easily be explained by heading down to the DMV and checking out the average initiative level of a standard government worker? There are no "plots", there is no "campaign of fear". There is only crass incompetence. Don't kid yourself. 9/11 was a tragedy of bureaucracy and political tunnel vision. Believing in some sort of fiendish plot is giving them far too much credit.