From: "Ed Carp [khijol SysAdmin]" <erc@dal1820.computek.net>
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 13:23:26 +0800
To: alanh@infi.net (Alan Horowitz)
Subject: Re: PRIVACY: Private traces in public places
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.960109232922.15111B-100000@larry.infi.net>
Message-ID: <199601100511.XAA20243@dal1820.computek.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> Governments or whoever, can do all they want to make their collection of 
> dossiers bulge even bigger than they are. But, these dossiers are only 
> data sets. Data isn't quite the same os information. Information isn't 
> quite the same as knowledge. Knowledge isn't quite the same as 
> understanding. And understanding the situation has not been, 
> historically, enough to ensure that government (or whoever) decision 
> makers make the "right" decision.
> 
> Let the internal security apparatchiks spin the bottle all they want. 
> They couldn't keep Rome from falling, nor the Byzantine Empire, nor the 
> Ottoman Sultanate. They couldn't keep the Third Reich in place for a 
> thousand years. They couldn't keep the Soviet Union glued together by 
> force nor dirty persuasion nor extortionate non-economics.

The problem, as I see it, is that you can have too much information. 
Information takes up room, takes up CPU cycles to process and store and
retrieve, and the worst part is, it takes a human to evaluate it.  No
computer in the world is going to be able to evaluate incoming humint for
reliability.  That takes a human, and I suspect that it will be that way
for quite some time.  The more information you gather, the worse the
problem gets, until you have this massive database of information, all
indexed and stuff, at your fingertips, but it's useless, because you can't
tell whether it's real or BS or disinformation. 
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
					214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager
					800/558-3408 SkyPager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi

"Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families,
through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a
waiting soul.  Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and
asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'"

                    -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes