I don’t often come across Yahoo comments that actually make sense, but in a recent decision to keep the NSA phone number collections going, one comment did give me a thought point on all of this spying and terrorism business:

Andy 3 minutes ago

Where does it end?
I’m all for our Government keeping secrets; I don’t care if Area 51 actually has aliens or not.

But the problem with this system is that where does it end?

Devised for catching terrorists, the system will capture every single menial little crime and every mass-murder that is ever discussed over a phone.
What’s the point if you don’t use all the data? Single out the possible terrorists and you ignore millions of crimes.
Focus on all the crimes and you have millions of data to sift through.

You lose either way.

Why didn’t the Government protect us from this terrorist attack?! “We were busy sifting through all the other crime!”

Why didn’t the Government protect me from this robbery?! “We were only looking for terrorists!”

We’ve seen movies like Enemy of the State or Minority Report, or TV shows like Person of Interest and think “Gee, is it really hard for law enforcement to do such a thing?” The answer is actually no. It would take a massive amount of human and computing resources to possibly pull off such a feat, but it’s not really impossible, and on a smaller scale, “Private Eye” Detectives have been doing it for decades.

The thing that most people don’t really understand about the NSA is that they’re collecting less real information about you and more metadata about you. Things like where you live, what neighborhood you’re in, where your kids go to school, where you work, what stores you shop at, your preferred gas station, and so on. In order to build a profile about anyone, you have to understand what it is they do on a daily basis. If all I did was sit inside and do nothing, and offer no information for them to capture, it would be impossible for them to build a detailed profile of me because there would be nothing for them to use. But since I work, shop at stores, use the internet, and several dozen other things, they probably know what I am going to have for dinner tomorrow based on either a spreadsheet of the last fifty-two weeks of Saturday dinners, or a statistical trend of what I like to eat on Saturdays in the winter.

The frightening thing about data collection is that it happens every day. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, anything and everything we take for granted as social media and services, can be used by any sophisticated system to build a profile of a person. People willingly give up information to these sites thinking it is harmless, meanwhile advertising agencies, political organizations, non-profit advocacy groups, and government agencies, are collecting this information for a variety of uses, from sending targeting advertising to you, to monitoring your use of these networks for suspicious activity. Couple this with the fact most major ISPs are in bed with the NSA and various government agencies, and it’s no wonder that groups like the EFF fight for your rights to privacy on the internet. Certainly, my search and browser history is no doubt the talk around some NSA floor’s watercooler.

But even for determined individuals or “private-eyes”, it’s not hard to do some of this data collection yourself. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, it a term given to technicians who spend hours analyzing search queries and metadata from websites to find what your site performs well at, in order to target existing a new demographics. As The Oatmeal proved, however, those same techniques can be applied to making comics and merchandise targeting things people pay attention to online. Things like “10 Reasons Your Cat is Psychotic” or “This One Weird Trick Will Net You Millions”. You see ads like this every day. These aren’t large corporations with advertising departments that resemble the cast of Mad Men, these are one or two-man shops that are running algorithms or analyzing metadata collected from homebrew apps or web page clicks to find out what you do online, and use that to generate new content designed to keep you there. It stands to reason that these same techniques can be applied by people to stalk individuals, blackmail someone, or infiltrate someone’s personal life. You can’t even cry foul, because you’ve been posting pictures for the past week from your trip to the Caribbean publicly, for thieves to see and then subsequently ran-sack your home.

Does this make it right for the NSA to spy on your life without your consent? Absolutely not. But it will continue to happen, because after 9/11, the Patriot Act started the ball rolling on all future legislation that would be enacted to marginalize and probably eventually negate our Constitutional rights in the name of peace, freedom, and equality. The NSA may be focused on foreign terrorism plots mostly, but who isn’t to say they will focus their efforts inwards, and begin to silence or remove those who don’t fall under the rules domestically? It’s not like you would know, with the media in their back pocket, this administration has been able to wield an immense amount of power and influence all while maintaining a friendly face, a mask, so as not to scare the commonfolk from realizing that for them, it’s about consolidating wealth and power to the political elite, bought and paid for by every citizen of this country, rich or poor. It frankly doesn’t matter which side of the political “aisle” you’re on, both sides are corrupt and there to get their share of the pie. People think Venezuela is a great example of socialism, but that country is so economically and socially broken from the corruption and greed of its political class that you hardly see the unraveling going on after Chavez’s death, the only person able to keep it somewhat together. Communism in China continues to stand on fragile ground, but even they are finding out the price of rapid economic and industrial expansion, just ask Russia. North Korea… well… they’re less Communist and more a fledgling dynasty held together by fear.

The absolute scary thing about free speech is that when you break it down, it’s all data points. Trends. Talking points. Analyze any speech, and you’ll begin to understand how a person thinks, and reacts to certain situations. This commenter is absolutely right when he says we could be using this to stop crime and improve our cities and towns nationwide, because we could be finding out just what makes people actually tick. What makes people in California vote liberal and what makes Texas vote conservative. We could be taking a hard look at people with mental health issues and building a profile of the sorts of things they do, to find out what drives them to commit the sort of crimes we sit around and ask each other why it could happen.

For all of the years human beings have been alive, we are the most ignorant bastards ever to walk this Earth. We have sophisticated brains that produce all sorts of emotions and logical thinking, and yet we default to the most inert and basic level of emotion and intelligence when arguing over whither or not God is real, or being pro-choice or pro-life. We’re so full of opinions, rhetoric, and comebacks, that we miss the higher-level reasoning behind everything. Because when you break down thought, reason, and reaction to data points, you start to understand why people think and react the way they do, and you understand that we’re really all roughly the same, no matter how smart or dumb we, or the other person, truly is. We limit ourselves to this notion that non-college educated people are simple and stupid, but they possess a view of the world that is often more pointed and real than any Ivy League graduate has ever seen. We all want a simple life made of simple things and simple happiness, but we all go about it different ways. All choices. All data points. All things someone could spend hundreds of years analyzing, and maybe not even ever finish.

That might be what will forever hold us back from ever knowing the secret of the universe, the ultimate truth, or true enlightenment. In a way, that’s kind of depressing, but in another way, that means we’ll always have something to work for.