In a stunningly surprising-yet-not-surprising move, The Intercept revealed that the NSA has named one of its metadata gathering programs Skynet. You know, the horrifying computer system in that one movie that tries to end humanity as we know it? The one that creates super powered cyborgs that kill humans? The thing that allowed us to create the “Governator” nickname? Yeah. That Skynet.
Joking aside, Skynet’s use as a program for gathering metadata has pretty scary implications. For starters, it’s imperfect. It recently mislabelled a prominent Al Jazeera journalist as a possible terrorist with links to Al Qaeda. It did so by gathering metadata, which involves things like suspicious phone behavior or practices, and compares them with the habits of known terrorists.
Combine that with the fact that this Skynet also tries to kill people based on that data (kind of like the evil chrome robots in the movie) with drones, and you’ve got sci-fi dystopia waiting to happen.
It’s important to note, though, that data gathering like this has already been ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court.
Maybe someone over at the NSA just has a wicked(ly bad) sense of humor. Or is that hoping for too much?
(via Gizmodo)
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