Will NSA Catch Target Corp Hackers?

Publisher’s commentary, by Wallace J. Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency has been gathering nearly 200 million text messages a day from around the world, gathering data on people’s travel plans, contacts and credit card transactions, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.
Code-named “Dishfire,” the NSA program collects “pretty much everything it can,” the Guardian said, citing a joint investigation with the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material from fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The above information is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the news stories that BRING TO QUESTION, Can the  NSA actually prevent terrorism or even identify and capture terrorist after the fact, as a result of the “Dishfire” spy program?
The NSA has the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of their infamous spy program… Catch the terrorist hackers that targeted TARGET CORP! Minneapolis-based Target Corp first disclosed the data breach DURING the holiday shopping season. It said then that debit and credit card data from up to 40 million customers were compromised. It later said on January 10 that a separate attack stole data from up to 70 million additional customers.
I cannot see how having access to every phone call and email and text message, as well as every tweet and attempt at social networking, will help prevent a terrorist action. There is too much information to filter as fast as needed to prevent something, but to find out who actually did something (not going to do but did it!) seems to be the least that you could expect from this “all-everything-information-pool”.  If the NSA cannot locate, capture and punish those terrorist who hacked TARGET STORES, then they are truly wasting time and resources with their “Dishfire” project.

About Wallace J. Allen