All That Data

The Baltimore Sun has a very interesting article on the Trailblazer program at NSA. You remember the NSA? That's the place listening in to all our phone conversations at W-'s order.

Trailblazer was intended to be a high-tech response to NSA's problem of reducing and analzying all the data it receives every hour. Overly ambitious from the start, the program has failed to deliver on its promise despite 6 years of effort and $1.2B spent. One intelligence expert calls Trailblazer "the biggest boondoggle going on now in the intelligence community." Here's the link to the complete article although you may have to register to see it in its entirety. The article makes for compelling reading and may worry you (if you're not already concerned) about POTUS's illegal wiretap effort. (If you want, you can reach NSA by, quoting Letterman, "simply calling any phone number in the country.")

And speaking of compelling reading, check out the New York Times editorial from today. It clearly rebuts all of the Bush administration myths that will be foisted off on the country again Tuesday night.

Incompetentcy and arrogance abounds - though for different reasons - at NSA and in the Executive Branch.
K-