Hilary Mason Quotes
Often, people think that individual data is the most valuable thing they can collect. But it's not useful to know what I am doing or where I am, unless you're particularly interested in me, which is weird. But it is very useful to know what a population of people are doing.
Wingfield, Nick. "One on One: Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist at bitly." The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2012.
He was referring to all the data that health insurance companies, retail stores, vendors such as Amazon.com, credit reporting companies, maintain on most Americans. He made the pint that private sources maintain much more private information on Americans than does the government. People acquiesce as they perceive some benefit.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He was the NSA Director when the agency literally captured data on every phone call in the United States and most internet e-mails and other digital communications. It became a national scandal and debate. There was an opposite point of view of intelligence experts. See {637041} and {637042}.
Here is an example of the mental set of NSA regarding electronically capturing information. It is easy to see why the agency got into a position where they were castigated by groups throughout America for the large scale gathering of even Private communications.
Almost no members of Congress has been trained in modern digital science and technology, and neither have their staff people. The result is that they have to depend on people for information and understanding who have vested interests which is not very desirable for objective legislating.
Hilary Lavender Mason was an English character actress who appeared in a wide variety of roles, mainly on UK television.
