Making Hay While the Needles Disappear

Steve M is on a roll lately. Regarding the uselessness of the highly anti-democratic NSA spying, he writes:

If the phone surveillance is pretty much useless, I'm not surprised -- it seems to me that the theory behind the program, and behind a lot of what we now know the NSA is doing, is that the best way to find a needle in a haystack is to pile as much hay on the stack as humanly possible. The vast majority of the money, effort, human labor, and computing power is dedicated to amassing more and more hay. The priority is hay collection and management, not needle identification.

We understandably see these programs as ripe for abuse. And yes, I think I think a Nixonian administration could easily use this data-collecting power to spy on enemies. Spying on political activists who are operating completely within the law is also made easier.

Obviously we should know whether any of that has gone on under Bush or Obama. But I think what's more likely, under both presidents, is that a worship of the method led everyone involved to think it must be worthwhile because it's so damn big and expensive and all-encompassing.

SNIP

It seems like a good idea because it's awesome. Not because it works. And so the hay continued to be collected and piled and sorted, at great expense, because the hay-management technology is so damn cool.

It's the same boys-and-their-toys attitude that leads to every ridiculous overbuilt boondoggle in the history of technology.  But in this case, there's far more at stake.