By Matt Sledge
NEW YORK — The CIAs chief technology officer outlined the agencys endless appetite for data in a far-ranging speech on Wednesday. Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOMs Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos — and that the agency wants all of it.”The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” Hunt said. “Since you cant connect dots you dont have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.”Hunts comments come two days after Federal Computer Week reported that the CIA has committed to a massive, $600 million, 10-year deal with Amazon for cloud computing services. The agency has not commented on that report, but Hunts speech, which included multiple references to cloud computing, indicates that it does indeed have interest in storage and analysis capabilities on a massive scale.The CIA is keenly interested in capabilities for so-called “big data” — the increasingly massive data sets created by digital technology. The agency even has a page on its website pitching big data jobs to prospective employees. Hunt acknowleded that at some scale, data storage becomes impractical, adding that he meant “forever being in quotes” when he said the agency wants to keep data “forever.”
Read more CIAs Gus Hunt On Big Data: We Try To Collect Everything And Hang Onto It Forever.
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