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Why not anonymize the data and make a hackathon (the goal being to identify potential terrorists? i don't know)? Why not give it back to the taxpayers who paid
by return0 13y ago
Why not anonymize the data and make a hackathon (the goal being to identify potential terrorists? i don't know)? Why not give it back to the taxpayers who paid for its collection? I know two wrongs don't make a right, but maybe something good could come out of this.
- LowKarmaAccount 13y agoThe data that the NSA is valuable precisely because it isn't anonymous. You can't make any worthwhile statistical discoveries with truly anonymous data because you don't really know what you are measuring. Any information that they don't strip before releasing it (which they won't) could be traced back to a certain person or organization that the metadata is about. The Boston bombers weren't caught because of cellphone data. They were caught because they engaged the police in a gunfight; one of the brothers escaped, and he was caught because a man reported that his boat had a blood trail on it.
- kahirsch 13y agoThey actually were tracked by the cell phone of the man whose car they hijacked. Obviously, this was only a small part of the story and isn't the same kind of cellphone data.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jlgreco 13y agoYou are downvoted, but this is exactly what eventually happened with the Stasi archives (those that were saved from destruction), and is exactly what I wish to one day see in America.
- sneak 13y agoAnonymizing the data would make it useless. Tokenizing/pseudonymizing the data would make it identifiable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak