[1st-mile-nm] CIA Chief Tech Officer: Big Data Is The Future And We Own It

[Richard Lowenberg]

Not specific to New Mexico, but an important look at the other side of 
our networked world.

You may also want to read the article "Only Connect: in the April issue 
of Harpers,
discussing a related aspect of the Google Kansas City fiber networking 
initiative,
which I attach here, as you need to subscribe to read the article 
online.

RL

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CIA Chief Tech Officer: Big Data Is The Future And We Own It

Michael Kelley	| Mar. 21, 2013

GigaOm

On Wednesday, the CIA's chief technology officer detailed the Agency's 
vision for collecting and analyzing all of the information people put on 
the Internet.

The wide-ranging presentation at GigaOM's Structure:Data conference in 
New York City came two days after it was reported the spy agency is on 
the verge of signing a cloud computing contract with Amazon — worth up 
to $600 million over 10 years — that involves Amazon Web Services 
helping the CIA build a "private cloud" filled with technologies like 
big data.

After laying out what the CIA does — i.e. collect intelligence, conduct 
analysis, perform covert action — CIA CTO Ira "Gus" Hunt detailed just 
how the agency plans to acquire, store, and analyze digital data on a 
massive scale.

"You're already a walking sensor platform," Hunt said, referring to all 
of the information captured by smartphones. "You are aware of the fact 
that somebody can know where you are at all times because you carry a 
mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, 
I hope? Yes? Well, you should."

In fact Hunt noted that based on the sensors in a smartphone, someone 
can be identified (with 100 percent accuracy) by the way they walk — 
implying that someone could be identified even when carrying someone 
else's phone.

The challenge for the CIA is to find the relevance is the ocean of 
information when something happens. The first step is for "data 
scientists" to save and analyze all digital breadcrumbs — even the ones 
people don't know they are creating (i.e. "More is always better").

"Since you can't connect dots you don't have, it drives us into a mode 
of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it 
forever," Hunt said. "It is really very nearly within our grasp to be 
able to compute on all human generated information."

He ends with comments about how the "inanimate is becoming sentient," 
how cognitive machines (e.g. Watson) are going to "explode upon us," and 
how technology is moving faster than governments, legal systems, and 
even individuals can keep up.

Check out the key slides from the presentation >

Read more: 
http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-presentation-on-big-data-2013-3?op=1#ixzz2ODarsLCq



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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Dir.
1st-Mile Institute, 505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
www.1st-mile.com  rl at 1st-mile.com
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