<story><title>Giving the F.B.I. What It Wants</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/giving-the-fbi-what-it-wants.html?src=twr&amp;pagewanted=all</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lisper</author><text>&amp;#62; if 300 million people started sending private information to federal agents, the government would need to hire as many as another 300 million people, possibly more, to keep up with the information and we’d have to redesign our entire intelligence system&lt;p&gt;This man is hopelessly naive about modern computer technology.  Keeping track of 300 million people is not quite trivial (yet) but well within the means of the FBI at its current staffing and funding levels.  Worse -- much worse -- is that data mining is &lt;i&gt;virtually certain&lt;/i&gt; to result in very convincing looking false positives.&lt;p&gt;This is why it is unwise to take legal advice from performance artists.</text></comment>
<story><title>Giving the F.B.I. What It Wants</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/giving-the-fbi-what-it-wants.html?src=twr&amp;pagewanted=all</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ck2</author><text>This is going to backfire, bigtime.&lt;p&gt;The way it works is you will never be cleared, the security-theater machine has &quot;eaten&quot; you.&lt;p&gt;You can only give them more reasons to collect evidence on petty crimes, their original motivation for stalking you, even if your file was flagged accidentally, is long lost.&lt;p&gt;With half a million names on the &quot;Terrorist Watch List&quot;, once they have ways to automate this (ala nationwide facial recognition and domestic drones) you will be stalked for the rest of your life by the government. You&apos;ll be 80 years old and they will have terabytes on you for absolutely no reason. But if you even accidentally commit a petty crime, they will happily share the info with local cops to hassle you more.</text></comment>