The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) continues to collect vast amounts of personal data, allowing the agency and other actors to put it to questionable use, according to a new study on “trolling” personal communications and its impact on big data.
Market research Frost & Sullivan found in a study of NSA and the big data market that the spy agency sweeps up information from 99 percent of calls placed within and outside the U.S. Even when calls originate outside the U.S., they are frequently routed over network equipment owned by American carriers. NSA has ready access to the data carried by these commercial networks.
That ability creates a host of vulnerabilities that affect the big data market, said the report’s author, Jeff Cotrupe, Frost & Sullivan’s industry director for big data and analytics. “By figuratively placing all relevant communications in the U.S. on a dashboard for at-a-glance monitoring, the NSA is creating a scenario where an outside entity that gained control of NSA systems could conceivably and swiftly do a great deal of damage,” the report warns.
The best hope for plugging the security holes are research advances and legislation, including a bill in the U.S. Senate that would limit NSA’s data collection mandate. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced the legislation aimed at reining in NSA surveillance on July 28, just before Congress left for a five-week recess.
Meanwhile, Harvard University’s Center for Research on Computation & Society has launched a “definitional privacy” initiative that would probe political and ethical issues that extend beyond technical questions. One goal is to develop software-driven big data solutions.
“If successful, this could persuade data hunter-gatherers across law enforcement, public policy, and private commerce to use applied technology to support things like a healthier population–while ensuring things like the U.S. Constitution are still breathing, too,” Cotrope added.
Much of the concern focuses on NSA programs exposed by former agency contractor Edward Snowden, particularly the agency’s PRISM program that reportedly focuses on obtaining direct access to most U.S. electronic communications and credit card transactions. The extension of these eavesdropping programs to smartphones and other mobile devices threatens to have a “chilling effort on the big data market, and many industries that rely on big data,” Frost & Sullivan warned.
The stakes are high for the estimated $25 billion global market for big data. Frost & Sullivan forecast that the big data market would grow by 12.7 percent compound annual rate through 2017, with revenues surging from about $28 billion in 2014 to about $40 billion by 2017.
The market researcher said key drivers of the big data market include mobile, retail and location analytics, social media and site analytics, marketing and sales data along with business process and strategic analytics.
While NSA claims to be interested in collecting metadata, it has been working with its U.K. counterpart, according to Frost & Sullivan, on techniques that could be used to crack Secure Socket Layer encryption used to protect web-based communications and transactions.
Along with targeting content encryption, the market research reported that NSA is also probing for weaknesses in the Advanced Encryption Standard, and encryption algorithm used to secure sensitive by unclassified government information.
Recent items:
Big Data Meets Big Brother: Inside the Utah Data Center
Feds Attempt Big Data Rehab After Snowden Revelations
April 19, 2024
- Carahsoft to Showcase Cutting-Edge Solutions with 70+ Partners at GEOINT 2024
- BrainChip Highlights the 2nd Generation Akida at tinyML Summit 2024
- MathCo Named Microsoft Solutions Partner for Data and AI
- Salesforce Survey: Data Will Make or Break Workers’ Trust in AI
- Weights & Biases Announces Expanded Integration with NVIDIA NIM
- Dataminr Introduces ReGenAI to Enhance Real-Time Event Monitoring
- Cisco Reimagines Security for Data Centers and Clouds in Era of AI
- Gurucul Enhances Federated Search Capabilities Across Multiple Data Sources
- SAS-Sponsored Study Highlights Talent Shortages and Strategic Gaps in GenAI Adoption
- Redgate Launches Enterprise Edition of Redgate Monitor for Large-Scale Databases
April 18, 2024
- SAS Viya Expands Generative AI Capabilities with New Data Maker and Industry-Specific Assistants
- Moveworks Partners with Microsoft to Deliver Secure, Scalable Generative AI Solutions to Customers
- Rockset Announces 2024 Index Conference, Industry Event for Engineers Building Search, Analytics, and AI Applications at Scale
- SAS Advances Industry Solutions with Packaged AI Models
- Altair Acquires Cambridge Semantics, Powering Next-Gen Enterprise Data Fabrics and GenAI
- SAS Adds to Its Trustworthy AI Offerings with Model Cards and AI Governance Services
- Fujitsu and Oracle Collaborate to Deliver Sovereign Cloud and AI Capabilities in Japan
- Kore.ai Introduces Experience Optimization Platform V11.0, Accelerating AI Deployment
- Volumez Expands Collaboration with AWS, Joins ISV Accelerate Program
- AI Squared Raises $13.8M to Accelerate Widespread AI Adoption Within Organizations
Most Read Features
Sorry. No data so far.
Most Read News In Brief
Sorry. No data so far.
Most Read This Just In
Sorry. No data so far.
Sponsored Partner Content
-
Get your Data AI Ready – Celebrate One Year of Deep Dish Data Virtual Series!
-
Supercharge Your Data Lake with Spark 3.3
-
Learn How to Build a Custom Chatbot Using a RAG Workflow in Minutes [Hands-on Demo]
-
Overcome ETL Bottlenecks with Metadata-driven Integration for the AI Era [Free Guide]
-
Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence 2023
-
The Art of Mastering Data Quality for AI and Analytics
Sponsored Whitepapers
Contributors
Featured Events
-
Call & Contact Center Expo
April 24 - April 25Las Vegas NV United States -
AI & Big Data Expo North America 2024
June 5 - June 6Santa Clara CA United States -
AI Hardware & Edge AI Summit 2024
September 10 - September 12San Jose CA United States -
CDAO Government 2024
September 18 - September 19Washington DC United States