isn't sharkfinn / rt10 (insert NSA eavesdropping acronym here) just a boondoggle ?

[John Case]

(from Bob Woodward:  Obamas Wars)


"On the technical side, McConnell explained, the National Security Agency 
(NSA), which he had headed from 1992 to 1996, had developed a breakthrough 
eavesdropping capability. It had begun years before with a project 
code-named SHARKFINN that was designed to speed the acquisition, storage, 
dissemination and availability of intercepted communications, including 
cell phone calls and e-mails. The project advanced and was soon referred 
to as RT10, which increased the speed in real time to factors of up to 10 
to the 10th power, or 10 billion times faster. It was now called RTRGReal 
Time, Regional Gateway. RTRG meant there was a way to capture all the 
data, store it, and make it instantly available to intelligence analysts 
and operators, allowing the U.S. to react quickly in response to the 
enemy."


This is like developing a foolproof way to kill every mosquito in just 
your own backyard.  It means nothing if you don't change the actual 
landscape within which you are working.

In a landscape where I can lease an IP address, anonymously, at any street 
corner (worldwide), and where my entry and exit points are completely 
arbitrary and fungible ... nevermind the availability of strong crypto ...

So this is just a subsidy to SAIC and Raytheon and Boeing (and Cisco and 
Juniper and Oracle) and has no meaning to anyone but the most inept and 
technically illiterate lawbreakers.

Meanwhile, your Apple iPic photo gallery of this weekend in San Diego 
spins on a disk somewhere underground...