Big data has become a frequent subject of national security reporting and academic research, where experts often raise concerns about “big brother.” Civil liberties concerns often dominate the public debate on big data, and much less has been written on how big data tools contribute to national security.
Data are a defining feature of modern society. Every day, humans and the machines they interact with create 2.5 trillion megabytes of data. As data become more prominent and readily available, the temptation to analyze them and make sense of the world through specific analytics methods or algorithms grows.
