Prior to XKeyscore, the work of the NSA analysts was comparable with "Forrest Gump on his shrimping boat off the coast of Alabama," reads the report from Griesheim. From the ocean of data, the report reads, the analysts pulled in "a boot, a toilet seat, seaweed, and, there they are . three shrimp!" (ellipse in original) To get to these few shrimp, they were forced to use vast resources, including documents or metadata that expand knowledge about the targets. "We deal with tons of toilet seats, the spam and other junk," the report reads. But after the introduction of XKeyscore, the work, the report indicates, became much more efficient, because the tools made it possible to make precise casts, bringing in more shrimp and less by-catch.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-is-a-both-a-partner-to-and-a-target-of-n sa-surveillance-a-916029.html or http://goo.gl/SQZNwj (The whole article is worth a read.) -- James S. Tyre Law Offices of James S. Tyre 10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512 Culver City, CA 90230-4969 310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax) jst...@jstyre.com Policy Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org -- Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.