If you're OK with revelations of NSA snooping, you're part of the problem

[klebean]

99. perspective?

Last edited Fri Jun 7, 2013, 01:09 PM - Edit history (1)

The core issue in this matter is the fear this data will be used by totalitarian regimes, thus it's naive - if not a somewhat precious notion - that in this day and age we (the People of the USA) should not engage in a cold war-type race to outrun the advances of much less democratic nations.

For example, consider the (wealthy) radical Wahhabi movement in Africa coupled with the explosion of cell phone use/ownership in Africa...obviously the threat doesn't end with the death of leaders like Osama in an age of rapid advances in communication technology.

(The context of the quote below is in regard to cryptanalysis from this excellent and comprehensive article published over a year ago.)

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

"These goals have considerable support in Congress. Last November a bipartisan group of 24 senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to approve continued funding through 2013 for the Department of Energy’s exascale computing initiative (the NSA’s budget requests are classified). They cited the necessity to keep up with and surpass China and Japan. “The race is on to develop exascale computing capabilities,” the senators noted. The reason was clear: By late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan’s “K Computer,” with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops."

If the link I put in my post doesn't work this time, it's an article entitled "The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)" at wired dot come