TWISTED: NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails

[kpete]

NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails
by Justin Elliott
ProPublica, July 23, 2013, 12:39 p.m.

The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.

But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology.

"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.

The system is “a little antiquated and archaic," she added...
http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-own-emails


I am laughing so hard, I am choking myself...
but, peace anyway, kpete

[Pretzel_Warrior]

1. I believe them. They've been so truthful about everything else so far

that there is no way I would question this explanation.

[PoliticAverse]

2. They forgot to add "and you can't prove we can so there". n/t

[NightWatcher]

3. They're choking on so much metadata that they can't find anything

That's my big fear with them saving everything, that they can't find what they need should a threat arise.

[targetpractice]

4. Maybe that's why they need to grab everything...

...until the time comes when they can figure out how to search it. :-/