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What the article left out.. Guess what the limiting factor of effective surveillance of Islamic terrorists is? And I state that the CIA and NSA have known thi
by fredgrott 11y ago
What the article left out..
Guess what the limiting factor of effective surveillance of Islamic terrorists is?
And I state that the CIA and NSA have known this since the early 1970s...
Ready? Its the amount of trained foreign language people that the CIA, NSA, and FBI have that happen to be skilled in largely Arabic based languages.
Now for the wrinkle how do we get those numbers increased?
Guess? The exact opposite of what republican law makers want to do that is have a fully functioning immigration system.
NSA could tomorrow sweep all communication world-wide but without concrete steps to increase foreign language people to translate any of it is such a HUGE BONDOGGLE that defies description..
- dmix 11y agoThat is part of a far bigger problem than just requiring a large bilingual workforce: http://as2914.net/ http://as2914.net/ (map of BGP networks) ^ comparing this to finding needles in haystacks is a a severe understatement. The scale of internet is mind-boggling. The amount of data flowing through it is massive. Considering most of that which is relevant is wrapped in HTTPS and even the best financed SIGINT agency will have a tough time doing mass surveillance dragnet with any cost-effective results. Add foreign languages into the mix and it's even more expensive.
- oberstein 11y agoFlooding the country with Arab speaking immigrants with the goal that some will filter up to the TLA agencies to help with surveillance on their former countrymen is ludicrous. If you want the numbers of Arabic speakers increased, you teach the language or hire existing talent. In any case, machine translation is pretty good these days -- even if Google doesn't perform that well on Arabic. Encryption is a much bigger barrier than language.