You would think that, except for the fact that our problem is not data collection, it's data analysis. This was the argument against Total Information Awareness - a number of intelligence professionals observed that even before TIA, attempting to get useful data out of the available information was like trying to find a haystack in a haystack of haystacks. There's also the fact that the "warrantless wiretapping" we all found out about in 2005 wasn't so much a bunch of spooks eavesdropping. The NSA *literally* put a split on the sum total communications traffic in the United States and duped it.. That's all the traffic. ALL of it. Every bit of telecom going into or coming out of the United States. Every last bit. Every one, every zero. So - between 2002 and NOW the NSA has had every single bit of voice and data traffic in the United States. Are we safer? Is there anything left to grab? 'cuz if it can be put on copper or fiber, we've already got it. (*by the way, The Shadow Factory is a hell of a read*)
Good point. Maybe the NSA should start sponsoring graduate and postdoc fellowships for information processing and informatics research. I'm sure they could do it clandestinely through some shadow organization. Hell, maybe they already do. Obviously, having a bunch of data is useless if you don't know what to do with it (see Obama's BRAIN initiative for a great example of another policy of this sort).
Maybe the NSA should start sponsoring graduate and postdoc fellowships for information processing and informatics research.