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You have to use machine filtering of some kind, because there's too much information. A director of NSA, pre 9/11, once remarked that the entire organization p
by Animats 2y ago
You have to use machine filtering of some kind, because there's too much information.
A director of NSA, pre 9/11, once remarked that the entire organization produced about two pieces of actionable intelligence a day, and about one item a week that reached the President. An internal study from that era began "The U.S. Government collects too much information".
But that was from the Cold War era, when the intelligence community was struggling to find out basic things such as how many tank brigades the USSR had. After 9/11, the intel community had to try to figure out what little terrorist units with tens of people were up to. That required trolling through far too much irrelevant information.
- halper 2y agoA picked nit, perchance, but you may have meant "trawling". Not sure how much trolling the NSA does :)
- agurk 2y agoTrolling is a fishing technique [0] of slowly dragging a lure or baited hook from a moving boat, and is likely the meaning that online trolling takes it from rather than a creature from Scandinavian folklore [1]. There's definitely a metaphor to be made for trolling for data, that GP could have been intentionally making. I've certainly seen that idiom used before, although it could have been an eggcorn [2] for trawling. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang)#Origin_and_etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang)#Origin_and_etymo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn