Big Data and Cloud Culture - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 183

and other search engines, which apply algorithms to databases to deliver
search results. Facebook's Graph Search takes this to a new level by pro-
viding search results tailored to the record of subjective choices such as
friend requests and “likes.” Seeing the value of big data in ordinary online
use has added to individual user capabilities and, in the process, length-
ened the industry lead of those companies, especially Google, that have
invested in their development. For example, Microsoft pioneered the use
of large databases to spell-check its word-processing program's documents,
but did not pursue the technology further, at least not as far as Google,
which used the same technology to develop its search, autocomplete,
Gmail, and Google Docs services. In fact, lessons learned from this use
of big data helped convince Google to develop a completely cloud-based
laptop computer, the Chromebook. These big-data applications are typi-
cally cited in descriptions of success stories, but others that receive less
attention bear close scrutiny.
The U.S. military is a leader in big-data analytics, with the largest proj-
ects run by the National Security Agency (NSA), the country's leading
global electronics spy agency and the subject of considerable controversy
in the summer of 2013, after a former NSA contractor lifted the lid on
the agency's massive domestic and international surveillance operations.
Through its global surveillance networks, the NSA has been collecting
data for sixty years, irst intercepting phone calls and now capturing emails
and other online communication, which it stores and assesses through a
variety of analytical systems, including keywords that might provide clues
about security threats. IBM delivered the NSA its irst computer, the top
secret Stretch-Harvest, to process surveillance in 1962 (Lohr 2013a). This
extended a long tradition of government surveillance of communication
technologies, which began in earnest with the telegraph. Back in 1861,
just a few years after the technology was deployed, President Lincoln
ordered federal marshals to enter every telegraph ofice in the United States
and seize copies of all messages, with an eye to rooting out Confederate
sympathizers.
Just as there is nothing especially new about the NSA's activities, there
is nothing particularly novel about the warnings over its abuse of power.
After all, in the 1970s, shortly after the Watergate scandal, a Senate
committee warned about the danger that agencies charged with foreign
spying, including the NSA, posed to the American people (Greenwald