Overwhelmed NSA Surprised to Discover Its Own Surveilllance "goldmine"on Venezuela oil executives

That the NSA, unbeknownst to itself, was collecting sensitive communications of top Venezuelan oil officials demonstrates one of the hazards of mass surveillance: The agency collects so much communications data from around the world that it often fails to realize what it has. That is why many surveillance experts contend that mass surveillance makes it harder to detect terrorist plots as compared to an approach of targeted surveillance: An agency that collects billions of communications events daily will fail to understand the significance of what it possesses. This newest revelation of NSA spying, reported as part of The Intercept’s partnership with teleSUR, comes just weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. government has launched “a series of wide-ranging investigations” into alleged corruption at Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA. More…