No.
What the NSA has, how it gets it, how it gets it and what it does with it is not Secret.
Not Secret but a puzzle to figure out, understand and take action on. That is exactly what the NSA is in business to do. It is called its Mission.
It is a puzzle to us but easy enough to figure out as pieces are put together. We simply have to apply the same Mission objective and methodologies to figure out the puzzle.
Works for them. Same thing can work for us. Fundamentally it is Group Intelligence. Our group is bigger than theirs. They have money and resources concentrated in their small group. It is comparable to Microsoft having big money and resources to create an operating system. Every hear of Linus Torvalds? Or, Open Source Systems? It is just a large number of smart people working within a conceptual and standards structured framework based on Cooperation instead of Competition.
I am increasingly seeing Cooperation and Competition as two fundamental conceptual models that drive everything we do. They are not binary concepts, black and white, but Yin and Yang models depending on the situation to combine and produce answers to the problem domain. Neither is exclusive not dominant. They must not be or the effectiveness of the model of their combination potential is decreased accordingly. They must go hand in hand like two people in love.
This truly excellent explanation of Cooperation and Competition relates to money presented in terms of genes that drive the process of relating the two concepts as they are expressed in our human nature. "The Dilemma of the Cooperative Gene" written by J. D. Alt. He writes good stuff. I always learn from reading what he writes.
The Purloined Letter was hidden in plain sight. The NSA Secret is in plain sight also. The NSA is simply one of the children of a higher Class Conceptual Object that might be called an Entity Enterprise as the broad term covering everything considered an enterprise. Less accurately; Just another business among all other business. They all share the same fundamental attributes. They are all Children of the Parent Object. All a bit different in their structure and implementation. All sharing the same attributes of the parent regardless if they are a religion or Microsoft or the government.
The plain sight of NSA secrets is the business world. Like our Space Program or NIH or even the military (excluding its industrial complex partner) the big difference is profit. Neither space, health, or the military is essentially constrained by it but the benefits of investment in technology research at the cutting edge that no commercial business would take a chance on to provide ROI give a spin off to the commercial side. The CIA proves that by generously funding research through In-Q-Tel. Wikipedia describes it here. What contractors develop for the CIA is offered in some form, maybe dumbed down, the next day for sale as a commercial product.
The NSA is a leader in Big Data technology. Nobody can dispute that. The NSA uses big data but a collection of businesses and academic institutions are the contractors to the development of big data structures and tools. The benefit they get is application of what is developed for the NSA to commercial sales and profit. Government research and development brains are slim. Government has long ago contracted out its brains and creative intelligence to private contractors. Chosen ones like SAIC and IBM. Government is being lead around by its contractors like a seeing eye dog. The smart ones in government jump ship and go to work for the contractors leaving behind the drones and come back into government only to be the wolf that leads the drones along their simple bureaucratic path.
In order to figure out the NSA puzzle of what they have, how they get it and what they do with it: Simply look at the commercial application of Big Data. It depends on Big Internet. No secrets there. The NSA does much the same things but the objective is bad guy identification to fulfill the mission of protecting Der Homeland. Plus many other various sub agendas which might be more important than the stated mission. Diversion and Deception and Asymmetrical Information is a business model. In the commercial world it is Fraud and Marketing Manipulation for gain and applied so well in Mass Media and Finance. That is the open secret of the commercial competitive world. The Republican party is still the party of competition that is the big secret of the political world that is hiding in plain sight, just like it hides in plain sight in the FIRE sector. Where the secret is hid behind guys wearing suits and the law that enables the Control Fraud that my hero Bill Black describes so well. The big secret of the commercial world really is not secret, Bill writes all about it but it is still unknown and unrecognized by the public otherwise they would be stringing up bankers and some politicians. It is a secret not only in plain sight but one that is being described so clearly and so well by so few.
So much for secrets in plain sight. Actually it is the most elegant way to hide a secret and there is some poetic beauty in its application as well as its cunning advantage of general ignorance is cultivated to obscure the writing on the wall.
Big Data: Look at the link to the Wikipedia definition. There are many providers of Big Data systems. The hardware and software to crunch big data. What is important is to look at who is using that software not for application in-house application but for application to produce a finished product tailored to the specification requirements of customers that will pay to get it but would not or could not invest in what it takes to produce the Big Data product they are looking for: Names (identities) and methods of connecting to those identities through an identified communication device: Mail, computer or knocking on the door. That is where the rubber meets the ground all based on targeting the individual most likely to buy.
Who are the businesses providing this kind of big data product as a service. The companies that crunch all available data like the NSA to identify specific targets of interest for some action? Good place to look is the stock market. However many of them might be venture capital financed. Things that are really good just don't get offered to the little players anymore. Just the mega investors. Like this venture capital investment in a company called NGDATA. Wow, what is this "Ambient Intelligence" thing? The new gold rush and it is going faster than I can catch up!
What companies are using Big Data hardware and software to produce a finished product list of targeted individuals for marketing purposes to business that do not want to invest in the infastructure to do the same thing. It is these companies that will describe in the greatest detail exactly what they can provide and from what sources they can provide it as well as how accurate their intelligence is.
Maybe these to start but I don't know how the king of the mountain is yet. The "go to" crunch with the widest range of input source and therefore the greatest potential to produce the best intelligence product to sell. The one most like the NSA that is using both the hardware and software bought by the NSA to do what they do. Oracle, IBM, HP, etc. They all sell to anyone including the NSA and probably sell exactly what was sold to the NSA. Private enterprise would certainly like to have all the raw data access the NSA has. Might they also gain access illegally. Might they lobby for laws that are so business friendly to gain this access or repeal laws that hinder it? Just like the Finance/Government scheme?
Datalogix,
Epsilon,
Acxiom,
and BlueKai
Everybody wants to play in the Big Data game. Add Criteo to the list
The term "Media Partners" might just be the key word to determine who is the biggest and baddest of the bunch. BlueKai claims over 160 media partners. That is a range number. Another number to consider is the depth of information available from these partners? It might only mean the partner answers the phone when BlueKai calls or gives unrestricted access to its entire data base for mining to monetize their data base. "Third party data" is another key word.
BlueKai does "Data Activation for Intelligent Marketing" and provides "Data Activation Solutions" Looks like I am going to have to learn a new set of euphemism now!
It wide be a true find to locate a site with a side by side comparison of these companies.
Epsilon: "Where Intelligence Ignites Connections"
Acxiom: "Connect with the Perpetually Connected Consumer"
Datalogic lacks the imagination for an up front catch phrase. Looks like the site was designed for nerds or government drones. I will have to search for their euphemism for what they do. Maybe they just provide marketing intelligence? Looks like they are in the source data capture hardware market rather than business intelligence.
BlueKai wins for euphemistic imagination.
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