[BigBrotherWatch] A Look Into the FBI's "Everything Bucket"

[furrbear]

SlashDot notes an EFF report on information wrested from the FBI over the last three years via Freedom of Information requests. The report characterizes what Ars Technica calls the FBI's "Everything Bucket" — its Investigative Data Warehouse. (Here's the EFF's introduction and the report itself.) The warehouse, at least 7 years in the making,

"...appears to be something like a combination of Google and a university's slightly out-of-date custom card catalog with a front-end written for Windows 2000 that uses cartoon icons that some work-study student made in Microsoft Paint. I guess I'm supposed to fear the IDW as an invasion of privacy, and indeed I do, but given the report's description of it and my experiences with the internal-facing software products of large, sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracies, I mostly just fear for our collective safety."

And seredipitiously, todays xkcd cartoon is quite apropos:

Comments

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

I especially love the "hover over" text on this one. :)

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Crappy design and interface aside, it's the data that matters.

[cubziz.livejournal.com]

AWESOME! *giggle*