In Alexander's stint, not only has the NSA's budget blown up, but the agency has saved so much data that it has filled servers at the headquarters in Ft. Meade and built a new installation in Utah — all to save Internet and communications traffic.
There's one big problem though: more data doesn't necessarily translate into more security for the American people.
In fact, a flood of "intelligence" can make an analyst more confused, not less.
"Analysts routinely drown in data they can't parse effectively," said Joshua Foust, a former government intelligence analyst turned freelance defense journalist.
Foreign Policy some of the blunders of the new system:
"He had all these diagrams showing how this guy was connected to that guy and to that guy," says! a forme r NSA official who heard Alexander give briefings on the floor of the Information Dominance Center. "Some of my colleagues and I were skeptical. Later, we had a chance to review the information. It turns out that all [that] those guys were connected to were pizza shops."
A retired military officer who worked with Alexander also describes a "massive network chart" that was purportedly about al Qaeda and its connections in Afghanistan. Upon closer examination, the retired officer says, "We found there was no data behind the links. No verifiable sources. We later found out that a quarter of the guys named on the chart had already been killed in Afghanistan."