What Tense Was That?

I have a friend who is tense. I didn't quite know what she meant. So, I asked...

After some discussion, I learned she was in the present tense. At least I know she'd get over it. But she did indicate she was not now but possibly would be in the future tense, or even in the future perfect tense. Well, maybe that's better than being the the past tense. So many of us live there; it's crowded. My goodness, what if she said she would have been in the past perfect (or pluperfect) tense? So much tense must involve much tension, plu-pre-perfect, or the rare but occasionally previously perfect.

 :)  I am so confused.

My Dad

Yesterday was our Dad's birthday.  He passed away many years, decades, ago.  I have never failed to remember him on this day.  He was a wonderful man, liked by all who knew him, adored by his family, and admirable in his life's  conduct.  I love him and miss him, though more than fifty years have eclipsed since his passing.

Division in America

National commentator Bill O'Reilly's latest commentary begins with "What is really dividing America?"  This simple statement accepts the division while begging an answer.  On the one had, it is a confession there is a division. No longer is there a fiction of division.   On the other hand, it confesses the division is a matter of concern, discussion, and hopes for resolution. It seeks for a solution. There is none.

You can talk about a division.  We all do this, sometimes just to make a point.  But when you cite it as a given, this is yet another proposition.  When you say there is no solution to a division, you are inviting an irresolute situation. This can be divisive; this can be derisive; this can be deadly. 

The Ultimate Virus

The ultimate computer virus is this.   Suppose you are infected by some virus, probably detected by your virus software.  This is great.  You feel secure, invulnerable, unassailable, comfortable.  You can do what you will.  Protected, you are.   So, you think, and so do I.

But suppose that virus that is soon detected and carefully destroyed has already done its damage.  It has infected your virus detection agent.  When you update it, as you will, the software downloaded originates at some alternate site.  You will never see the undetectable URL.  It will download and install the virus laden software that surely will appear to function as intended.  It will even find stuff that may not be there.  You feel secure, invulnerable, unassailable, comfortable.  But for certain viruses and other malware - theirs - your system is now totally and irretrievably corrupted. The now scurrilous software  may now serve for key-logging, may extract passcodes, may analyze key-words, or may determine account numbers.
Such an advent could compromise any encryption software you may be applying.

You think this is silly, beyond the pale.  One rule of thumb is that if you can conceive the notion, and it is possible, it exists.  The concept of a covert spy spying upon spies (except one) is a tactical element that has been extant for centuries.  Why not with software?

The purveyors of this cannot be detected, and live beyond any knowledge.  They can become known only through their own errors of application - a variation of greed or counter-deception.

Green is Good

Green People and Their Methodologies.  The Greens have been with us for decades, if not centuries.  In modern times, say since the seventies, let's look at the steps of their evolution. These are even today the steps to recruit and retain.  Green is Clean is an unquestioned premise, the mantra of the movement.  Green is Good is its twin sister.  This is not a short note to denounce green ideas and green solutions.  It is a short piece to examine methods, and the power and willingness of the true believers to promote their green agenda and/or religion.

A. Believe that green is good. (It is.) Believe that mankind is destroying the planet. Believe that green solutions are correct - and in fact the only solutions to save the planet.  These give the proper gravitas to the cause.
B. Educate the public to these beliefs - the first tool of recruitment.  Sign up the press - a key tool. Use the word "anthropogenic" often.  (It means, roughly, we did it.)
C. Develop a political agenda.  Get involved and get politicians on board.  Attach the  movement to a political party.  Work tirelessly.  Demonize the non-believer.  The introduction of corn-based ethanol was one of the first victories.  It remains unassailable to the many scientific and economic reasons why it was a bad idea in the first place.
D. Cheat - scientifically.  Devise complex quasi-mathematical, statistical projective models of global warming and then extrapolating to the cause of warming to be man made.  Despite the fact that few understand the models, wrapping the movement with in scientific flag was and remains crucial to co-opting the skeptical. Using scientific arguments elevates the rationale of the cause - always does.  Despite the facts that the models have been spiked by bad data, or good data has been diminished, assert the validity of the models.
E. Cheat - economically.  Develop economic policies to elevate the costs of non-green solutions (e.g. oil, coal) so that green alternatives (e.g. wind) become competitive.
F. Cheat - politically.  Regulate non-green solutions out of existence. Coal is going, going. ...

All of this is achieved without much open public debate, certainly no open scientific debate.

Now comes the unconsidered yet very green issue: dust.

Dust.  One item that most global climate change advocates and modelers have missed is the effects of dust.  Dust, technically called aerosols, is often swept up into the stratosphere by storms and tornados from arid regions of the world, is most difficult to analyze.  It also arises from power plants - probably to a lesser degree.  The amount of dust in the atmosphere can very well counter the claims of greenhouse gas effects, producing a type of global cooling, for which there is some twenty+ years of evidence. Some claim the may be a cyclical phenomena in the global climate.  It seems certain that serious volcanic eruptions over the ages have had this effect.  But exact and continuing measurements over a long period of time are simply missing.   Dust landing on snowfall can absorb more heat than purely landed snow.  The consequence is an apparent snow-melt, not due to warming, not due to greenhouse gases, but simply an advent of heat absorption. Another wrinkle in the pat equation of those who believe in a simplistic model.  But will they consider it as a possibility?
 

Possible Dream Quotes

I'm sure this one will get me in trouble.  It is offered only tongue-in-cheek,  total accuracy not implied.  It seems to be differentiated on both sides.  Enjoy.

• ·         Pelosi: I want to pass more laws I haven’t read.
• ·         Schummer: I’ll do anything I’m told.
• ·         Boehner: I don’t like it.
• ·         Paul: this is unjust for the people and for the government to enact.
• ·         Christie: I am for my state no matter what I need to do.
• ·         Obama: I’m no Dick Cheney.
• ·         Durbin: Chicago politicians own me.  I obey.
• ·         Romney: I believe in the goodness of man.
• ·         Priebus: I just don’t know what happened.
• ·         Cheney: We did what we had to.  I’m no Obama
• ·         Palen: I’m against most everything liberal.
• ·         Rick Santorum: Forget internationalism.  Let’s fight gay rights.
• ·         Alexander: I promise, we make inquiries only with a court order.
• ·         McCain: We should be more aggressive about supporting whomever.
• ·         Rubio: Gotta do something to move up the chain.
• ·         Clinton: What matter does it make now?
• ·         Kim Jong Un: We want only peace.
• ·         Admaninejad: Our nuclear program is only for peaceful energy.
• ·         Xi Jinping:  We’re not spying on anybody.
• ·         Putin: Fuck off. We’ll do what we want.

Hacking from the Inside

We hear so often about governmental and/or industrial hacking against a government and/or industrial concern.  What we never hear about, very much, is hacking from the inside.  The "insider hacking" is behind the firewall, inside the layers of protection, and inside the detection screens.  The insider hacker knows the full protocols of the system and is accustomed to working within them.  It is still not the work of an amateur, but the location is closer to where the information is kept.

Suppose someone, rather gifted in this art, is compromised.  (Spies have been doing this forever.)  The price of silence is information.  The horrified victim dreads the revelations and agrees to comply.  Then, voila, information is extracted, and later transmitted, and used by the enemy - whomever.  No one ever knows.  This sort of hacking remains undetected for a long time.  Insider hacking has betrayed nuclear for generations, industrial secrets for centuries, and military secrets for millennia.  This is one thing that worries me about the massive modern databases held by agencies (of all flavors) we should trust.

In our current situation of "meta-data" reposited by the NSA, this type of hacking completely transcends the rigors of a court order.  In the private sector, the collection of any and all data is an obstacle that never was.

Please note: hacking can take many forms including misinformation about what is known, what could be known, and what will be known.  If my opponent believes I have something deleterious, it really doesn't matter if I have it. 

Unintended consequences - Part I

The new jobs report (6/7/13) created this week of 175,000 new jobs was higher than expected by a small amount, and the boost in consumer confidence reported last week in the economy has generated a conflict or paradox in a grave situation.

The higher consumer confidence has probably inspired a large number of people, previously off the books in job-seeking to resume their search for employment.  The higher than expected number of new jobs, though underwhelming, was well noted.  Yet, the unemployment rate remained about the same, slightly up, at 7.6%.

What would happen if all those drop-out job-seekers suddenly got reengaged in finding a job? And what if the number of new jobs increased at their current tepid rate.  Nothing less than Disaster.  The unemployment rate would leap at least a couple of percentage points.   This implies the Administration, while enjoying greater consumer confidence, doesn't what too much of it.  Damn!

Quote of the Day:  

• Longevity is like fire retardant for the ambitious. 
• When there is a power at hand, a purpose evolves to apply it.
• A license to practice does not confer the wisdom to do so.

Businessmen are Like Athletes

Businessmen are like athletes; liberals are like your mom.    Just for fun.

On each of these there is an up-tick and on each a down-tick.  But they are interesting, even if you disagree. They are stated in universal terms formed that way mostly for contrast.  If you agree with the only the first set, you may be a liberal; if you agree with only the second set you may be a conservative.  If you agree with both sets, well then where does that place you???  In the middle?  This cannot be.  There is no middle anymore.  If you disagree with both, I dunno.

Businessmen are like athletes.
1. You will rarely hear of a businessman that gave his competitors every possible break, and never took advantage.
2. You will rarely hear of a businessman that did not compute his possible gain in a business transaction.
3. You will rarely hear of a businessman that will not hesitate to cut loses when the ship is sinking.
4. You will rarely hear of a businessman who is not proud of making money.
5. You will rarely hear of a businessman who disdains success.

Liberals are like your mom.
1. You will rarely hear of a liberal who believes in smaller government.
2. You will rarely hear of a liberal who believes all people should take full responsibiity for their lives.
3. You will rarely hear of a liberal who believes some people are incompetent, or worthless, or vile.
4. You will rarely hear of a liberal who declines to spend when money is available.
5. You will rarely hear of a liberal who doesn't believe that with just a little more money spent, things will not get better.

EMAIL secrets

It has been  just disclosed that many government officials are using secret email addresses, possible to avoid disclosure from FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.  The latest high level government official  transacting this practice is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, possibly in requesting funds from private corporations to support the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The claim is that this is necessary to prevent their in-boxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages. This may be so.  It may also be the case that many, not wishing or trusting the privacy of their communications are seeking closer privacy of their messaging.  In a previous note, there was discussed this phenomenon by former EPA director Lisa Jackson. See,
http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-two-generals-plus-one-more.html

If a SIO (some important official) wished to do this, it is possible with identity in place.  For example, if the official email address is tomesh(at)hhs.gov, it could be somewhat privatized to tomesh2(at)hhs.gov.  Just don't publish it.   This would obviate the mailbox cluttering problem.  (Even I do something like this, for exactly this purpose.) But if the privatization practitioner uses jomesh(at)hhs.gov or jomesh(at)hmail.com, this smacks of sneakiness. It conveys a disingenuous intent, at the very least. In the case of Sibelius, the secret address reported by the AP is KGS2(at)hhs.gov. This is reasonable, but if it was used for any kind of solicitation, not good would be the assessment of many.

What escaped me at the time was that if Jackson and Petraeus were doing this, many others may be doing likewise. "Fool me once, shame on you... ," begins the old aphorism.

This time I am certain the practice must be widespread throughout government, and probably in any information sensitive organization, public or private.  The fact that it remains so very much undiscovered does not imply a conspiracy but  more insidiously a type of mutual cooperation of people sharing co-vital information.  Participants have mutual stakes in this enterprise, and this implies some nefarious purpose.  Could it be power, profit, policy, infidelity, or what?  Whatever, it is not benign.  It has become a way to transact business at least one layer removed from discovery, much less scrutiny.

This is worrisome for a nation whose fundamental tenet is open freedom in multifaceted forms.  Yet, one could argue that in times past such communications were transacted face-to-face and thus were non-discoverable.   Nowadays, a wider scope of information transactions is required in a world of a distributed community contacts.  The secret emails provide some cover.  A most subtle matter this is.  What is your view?

Global Warming - redux

This is an update to but independent of  http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/06/climate-change-maybe.html

Politics, damned politics, cursed politics...  Such a more conservative institution there has ever been.  Whatever the view, your view, my view, politics invites a type of rigidity from which retraction of positions becomes extremely difficult.  Politicians are loathe to change their minds regardless of evidence to the contrary - unless it presents itself on their doorstep.  That said, let's get to the business of the day: Our Climate.

Global warming, climate change, extreme weather, whatever you wish to call it is a signature issue of our age.  It has a large group of believing in its precepts, based on rather sophisticated mathematical and statistical models.  None accommodate that global weather is a thermodynamic system and is therefore very much fundamentally unpredictable in the long term.  (Imagine, setting afire a piece of paper and trying to predict the exact form of the ash.) Yet the models work on statistical and projective models that work well looking backwards, gaining agreement with the past, and then boldly projecting into the future.   On this basis all the predictions are made.

Some have call these predictions and this pursuit as "junk science,"  jokingly calling for a "junk PhD."   It is serious business, junk or genuine.  We can't call it junk or genuine until a full vetting is available.   We do not know at this point whether the planet is evolving in a normal cycle, if the sun eruptions are making an effect, whether grasslands are declining or increasing, whether deforestation is a factor, or really anything firm.
  
Nonetheless, these folks have proposed a model, and if they were open to investigation would demand or recommend a government program to set the models on a firm scientific basis, open to critique by qualified scientists.  Indeed, there is evidence of warming.  This is our planet.  We should check it out, just as we do for any newly discovered virus.

Many adherents simply want to believe that mankind is at fault.  They feel badly and want evidence to believe.  The models give it, and they jump on board the Global Warming train. Many feel this is an "weighty" issue worthy of their concern and attention, and while not understanding it simply want to do something, maybe something that can be conducted at cocktail parties.

However, there is a political agenda held by some of the Global Warming adherents, namely further government control of all things human. Weather is big;  medical care is big; financial systems are big; education is big; nutrition is big.  All of these, also signature issues of our age, have a similar remedy proposed that the government should do something such as spend, regulate, or generally interfere.

Recall, there was once the widely accepted medical treatment for fevered patients by blood-letting.  It did, after all, serve to reduce the fever.  Had blood-letting become a political issue, we might still have it.  On climate change, we are merely in the first phase of investigation.  Too bad it has become so political. With political stakes at hand, there comes a rigidity of theory very difficult to penetrate.

Terrorism at Home

Terrorism at Home 

The President has finally announced there are terrorists amongst us.  My goodness, in his recent speech he smeared the term about something like catsup on a burger.  This is new for someone who's used at most the term "extremist" for a couple of years.  Thank goodness for his awakening vision.  

  

We have radicalized Islamic participants on many fronts, most prominently given in the list below.

• Underwear bomber
• Shoe bomber
• Time Square bomber
• Boston Marathon
• Fort Hood massacre
• Lockerbie
• Kenya embassy
• Libya consulate

The US has instituted its own terrorist campaign using the secrecy of drone events. Several enemies have been eliminated.  We celebrate the result but fear the technology that allows this to happen. Here at home we have right a deeper and more subtle type of terrorism.  Recall, terrorism implies the creation of fear of the citizenry.  Fear?  We have it! You have it!  

This more insidious form of terrorism is right in our midst.   It was created by the Department of Justice (DOJ) through the sequester of personal data and phone records of members of the press.  It has been created, as well, though the machinations of our very own Internal Revenue Service through errant audits and targeting of a tax exempt status for a select few. 

My simple question is this:  Who do you fear most?

•       Underwear bombers or the DOJ?
•       Libyan gunmen or the IRS?

We may say these terrorist attacks are one-off, though carefully plotted by hateful groups.  The others are carefully instrumented through a bureaucratic system so thick and so deep it is virtually impossible to identify the perpetrators.  So protected are they that denials (I don’t know nothin’ …) are accepted, though simultaneously ridiculed and rejected.  Often simple public servants are pulled into the service of being fodder of a most nefarious goal - the fear and denial of constitutional rights. 

So, we have terrorism right here vs. terrorism over there. 

Big Data

Newer information on the Information Snooping.  About Edward Snowden, the now high profile leek in the NSA snooping scandal.  It is not what he did at this point, it is about what information he carried with him.  This fellow seems clever enough to have covered himself with tools to help his future situations. Of course, a nefarious host government will smoke them out, much to Edward's displeasure.   The other problem is how many others (i.e. NSA contractors) have done or or doing the exact same thing: harvesting information.  This is a serious issue.  With the data mining capacity of various programs available to the NSA, any operative, with appropriate keywords, can uncover the identity of any secretive email senders, and to whom they have communicated.  One simply does not need the secret email address, one can inversely deduce the identity.  This is dangerous - really dangerous.  Folk can read this post all day long, uncover my email, check on what I'm up to, but I'm basically a nobody, probably uninteresting to anyone.  But we are now at the point where big time secrets can be completely uncovered, no matter how disguised the sender may think he/she is covered.   The moral of this story is to use serious encryption software in all communications if you really want them private. Even the NSA, with all its computing power and expertise, has trouble decrypting, for example, RSA encrypted messages.  (I think.)


New Information on Information Snooping.  It has now been disclosed the NSA has been compiling information on hundreds of millions of Americans.  Indeed, a fully new agency in Utah has been build to store and analyze this information.  The leak comes from a NSA contractor Edward Snowden.  See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-secret-surveillance-lawmakers-live. This seems to be a fact.  Snowden is now under scrutiny for possible criminal charges. OK. This is how the event is playing out. What would you expect?  Someone needed to make the leak, and that someone is in big trouble.   But...

What about other countries?  Are citizens of England, France, Germany, Russia also under similar scrutiny.  The software is there; the need is perceived; the knowledge is desired; the will to thwart whatever is rampant.   Politicians are fundamentally nosy.

You see this cheap war by the terrorists is having far reaching consequences.  Those people know what to do and are likely doing it.  (Just think a moment or two and you can envision easy countermeasures.)  More revelations are coming.  Make no doubt.

See update  on voice calls below...

Data mining is all the rage these days. It counts heavily what it can do for medicine, for education, and for taxation. How can it help us discover trends and patterns?  Statistical specialists consult on these bases.    Big data is the name of this game.  It can be done by subject, by predicate, by tonality, and simply by words. It depends on the bot-client profile of what information is desired.  Political, religious, food, you name it.  It is concomitant with the vast amount of information now posted.  Whether the form is blogs, news articles, commentary, web forums, email, Facebook, twitter, and all the others, this information is available to any and to all. Let us note the backups to the "cloud" though innocuous to most of us is one serious component of what we reveal.  The use and misuse of this information is the topic of our discussion.

We focus, not on how it can help, but how it can be used in nefarious ways.  This is what our society has come to.  Finding an edge to wedge a victory of sorts is the name of our story. While it may be easy to dismiss all this as a proto-paranoia, the fact that is possible, and may only have benefits to a few, indicate it should be considered by us all. We should worry about how much information we divulge, if only innocently.

Data mining is aided and abetted by the WWW robots, also known as bots. These are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. They receive and read everything . The greatest of these are web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files. The analysis and purposes for this analysis are the issues of this brief post.

We are discussing Exabytes of information.  This amount of information is absolutely unassailable by individuals, and even states.  However, it can be routinely scanned and codified for any conceivable purpose.

Important points to consider follow.

a. Your blog is routinely scanned by bots for information therein. Threats to this or that; support for this or that.  All recorded.  Neutral - family, cooking, gardening, etc. Don’t know.

b. Under the radar?  No.  All information is gleaned and stored as to the criteria of the bot-client. Democrat, Republican, Catholic, Islamic, and on-and-on.

c. Your email and newspaper is scanned for the same.

d. Your information is used substantially for advertising.  Why not?  Mercantile outfits need to target their customers.  They do it well.

e. Your local televised news is textualized, using parrots, for scanning. 

What is safe?  Maybe phone conversations. Maybe not. 

You may believe you are not subject to any of these.  Wrong.  Imagine a cadre of millions of minions who's sole goal is to read what is online, indeed read what you post online.  Let's look at a single example, seemingly innocent but with potentials for all sorts of analyses.

Wordle.  This is a website from which you can input information, lots of it, and see which words dominate the content. Simple counts . Wordle bills itself as a toy.  It is by no means a toy for a determined amateur at the determination of the valuation of a large amount of text.  What you will see is a "cloud" of words input each enlarged to their relative frequencies.  Suppose you have the frequency counts.  Then it becomes possible to evaluate the message(s) according to how they are used.

The next level is only slightly more complex.  Look at sentences, subject, predicate, and object. 

Points for scanning.

1. The subject sets a pointer to the file into which the information is sent.

2. The predicate indicates positive or negative aspect.

3. The object confirms the locator pointer.

Keep in mind the unlimited data mining under consideration.  (In a future post we will show how fundamentally easy this is to do.)  Make no doubt about any anonymity.  Make no assumption that it will not be noticed.  Anyone can post something unfavorable to whatever is the targeted issue.  Usually, though duly recorded nothing results. No flags are raised.  No information is communicated.  But there is the…

Preponderance. With so many blogs, there becomes a preponderance factor.  Are similar words and predicates used?  Do subjects and predicates correlate with established patterns?  Originally,  there may be only a few billion accounts worth recording. But the preponderance of posts may indicate trends, patterns.  The number is now just in the millions.  You may post something deleterious to the purple-polkadot-ed party.  Do is once or twice, and you are unnoticed.  Do if often and it is noticed by the anti-purple- polkadot-ed party. The number is now in the tens of thousands.  Manageable!

Examples:
1. My daughter just got another tattoo.  I am so distressed and cannot convince her of the long term effects.   Little notice
2. I have heard the mayor has yet another tattoo.  Big notice.

Popularity.  An important factor is how many hits one gets.  If you publish on an accepted blog often the numbers of hits are recorded.  These are available to the bot. If the number is high, ...  If low, ...  But the determination of the number of hits may rest with the provider.  We do not know whether providers make this information available to clients.  Providers do wish to make money.  This is clearly a source.

Applications.

·         News reporters - These have a byline publically available.  Their views are well recorded.

·         Bloggers - These often have a political tone. Neutral blogs on recipes and the like are happily discounted. 

·         Commentators - Commentators have a clear signature of views.  While scanned and reported to the client, nothing new is rarely discovered.

Security of bloggers. Whatever blogger host may indicate, there remains the issues of secuity of their clients remain in question.  You give your email address to the host. The email address is located to a person.  The person is identified and coded in the data base.  All of this happens transparently to you, and perhaps to your wishes.  All of this cannot happen without the cooperation of blogger hosts. Do you know how your information is posted, and who has access to it?  Do you know for sure?

Correlation with established blogs.  Note: You are not the first to write on any subject. Many examples obtain. Megabytes of information are available.   Currently, there is software that can automatically grade essays for high stakes testing environs.  This same software can be used to "grade" news article or blogs for political, medical, educational slant or other purposes. 

Keep in mind, we do not have philosophers in charge of data mining well read in the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Hume, but rather of operatives, all trying to make a point, upgrading their utility, enhancing their presence, and making a buck.  All will do what suits their purpose and control. Being an "American" is secondary. This has become errant ethics.  Succeeding is paramount.

Voice Calls.  It has just been reported (6/6/13) that the NSA (National Security Agency), our valued foreign security agency, responsible for the detection of threats against the US, has sequestered  phone call records from millions of Americans - even every day folks.   Of all agencies, the NSA buys the fastest and biggest computers on the market.  They have a data processing capacity that eclipses your imagination.  Can you conceive of the data processing power to analyze a million phone calls per day, or ten million, and scan them for possible threats?   One account indicates more than 100 million records have been  obtained.
What has been obtained for specific numbers are calls from one number to another, the locations, and the duration of the calls.  From this, a net is constructed, and then patterns are analyzed.  This is truly big data, so big it is impossible for a single person, a team, or even a battalion of analysts to discover anything meaningful.  This is looking for tiny needles in a gigantic haystack.  What is so difficult for you and I is the magnitude of computing power this requires.  It exists.  In fact, there is an entire established field of big data with data mining now widely used in banking, government, and industry.   These are ultra hot topics these days.

If you have sufficient resources, you can uncover almost any information you seek.

The NSA, which has strongly contributed to the security of this nation, has those resources.

The next step, fiction as far as I know, will be to obtain the calls themselves.  Here is a rather rough scope of the project.   First, you have to get the phone recording; then you have to textualize the speech - even with foreign languages or accents; then you have to scan for keywords and grammar; finally you need to construct possible threatening contexts.  All the pieces of this scenario even now exist.  This may sound like science fiction, but in my view, the NSA would be remiss in their mission if there were not experimenting with such technologies.  My goodness, if even I can conceive of this, one must conclude that when such software is fully integrated, even your local business could analyze phone calls of all corporate phone conversations.  Some already do this for email - child's play in comparison.

It is a certainty this will be accomplished.  The software will be packaged.  The software will be exported.  Any government with the digital capacity to handle the magnitude of this data will be co-opted to use it.  After all, it is in the interests of national security, something we've all heard before.  Ten years.  Ten years before all of our phone conversations, emails, and Internet transactions will be fully integrated with an individual profile for all, and a net, technically a neural network, connecting one to the other.   Everywhere! 

Flash, the latest (6/6/13) is that the NSA is now screening all web activity of untold millions of citizens.  Be careful what you click on.

However paranoid or suspicious you may be about external eavesdropping on your personal business, things are probably worse.