reported earlier this week about an exchange between
(R-TX) and Google Law Enforcement and Information Security Director
. The incident occurred during a
on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) held by the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations. Gohmert queried Selgado on Google’s system of selecting keywords from user’s e-mails for advertising purposes, but seemed to have difficulty understanding how the system actually worked. Here’s video of the exchange:
In a separate incident,
reported on Central Intelligence Agency Chief Technology Officer Ira “Gus” Hunt’s presentation about the agency’s use of Big Data analytics at a conference in New York. “The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” he said. “Since you can’t connect the dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.” It was also
earlier this week that the CIA had reached a $600 million, 10-year deal with Amazon for cloud computing services. Here’s video of Hunt’s presentation (video is not mobile optimized):
In one instance, a lawmaker seems to have difficulty understanding the technology, and in another, a powerful government representative discusses his agency's use of data maximization with unlimited retention. What should the privacy and security communities think and do about these types of issues?
