Annie Searle & Associates, LLC

It's hard to let this topic go. There's testimony going on right now in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The big question is whether this level of disclosure on the program will change anything.

I write four times a year for the London-based digital magazine, The Risk Universe. Here's my latest contribution which describes some of the joys of teaching and what I hope to accomplish.

A clear explanation of metadata, and how it is used to gain information about Internet users. See also the timeline connected to the article that lays out a kind of history of surveillance.

Is this a lot of requests, or what?

Limiting contractor access when contractors have developed the programs that are running will be a real challenge. I believe that so many contractors were hired after 9/11 because the government hiring process would have taken too long, and it was not clear what the government would need to hire for. Perhaps by now that has changed, though I expect little will change overall in the relationships between firms like Booz Allen and NSA, NIS and DHS.

In light of the Pew survey released yesterday, which indicates most Americans are comfortable with this level of surveillance because they have nothing to hide, Alexander's comments will probably pass unnoticed. But certainly one effect of the leaks is to bring into the light the depth and breadth of these programs.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will the government give these private sector technology companies permission to say more? What would the implications of that permission be relative to prosecution of the leaker? I am beginning to think that these issues are too complex for most Americans to understand at all.

This article, with its profile of both Snowden and Manning, does make you wonder if people without college degrees should have access to such sensitive materials. Would learning to look at the world through a series of college course requirements designed to exapand one's thinking and understanding of the world, have made a difference?

It would be unfortunate if what could be a national discussion devolved only into wrangling among members of Congress. Yet we are now so vast a group of citizens that it is difficult to know how such debates might take place. Ideas anyone?

Here's my latest column in this month's issue of ASA News & Notes, along with three new research notes. The first, by Devin Luco, looks at risks of mobile banking; the next, by Chitra Raman, looks at risk exposures at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; and the third, by Del Hazely, looks at the digital divide on the continent of Africa.

This article includes a sidebar with excerpts from the PRISM powerpoint document.

Here's an encapsulated version of both sides of the argument on security vs. privacy. We have all known that data mining and other digital tools are utilized in the war on terrorism. We elect officials in this country to protect our interests, for both the legislative and executive branches of government. The judicial side is a bit more complicated, but at the highest level judicial candidates are recommended by the executive and voted on by the legislative branch. That's our form of government: even where there is no transparency for extended periods of time, usually what is secret is revealed. Now we'll have a larger discussion on whether the Patriot Act should be re-architected.

Though more details will most likely continue to emerge, this story only confirms what many of us have suspected for some time: that the government's security program runs mostly on digital pattern recognition on a broad scale. It is hard to know how President Obama will handle the China delegation on matters of cyber intrusions in light of the revelation that the U.S. government's intrusions reach into other countries around the world.

ASA News & Notes ran a research note several months ago on FISA and the courts used to obtain such secret warrants, which you may wish to re-read in light of this article. If you are a Verizon smartphone user, you are undoubtedly shaken by this turnover of your phone log records to the federal government. Clearly a broader discussion of how these government powers, now part of the Patriot Act, actually work is in order.

Bankers and banks are resilient types...and look what's back, or at least what is considered. The synthetic CDO is one of the least understood financial instruments but a certain contributor to the financial crisis that we are only now starting to recover from. I suppose that's what this option is back.

There is no doubt that this will be one of the most controversial decisions that the Supreme Court has made. And technology has made it possible.

We saw starting in 2007 how taking too much risk can cause major economic impacts. Here's the flip side: taking too little risk causes another set of problems that might be summarized in the term "stagnation."

Sustainability exceeds the parameters of operational risk, which is why we don't cover it or its sibling, climate change, that often. Here, though, is a story we can all be proud of, particularly those of us who live in Seattle.

A thought-provoking editorial, not for the faint-of-heart.