Comment Re:Before everyone goes too conspiracy overboard.. (Score 2) 71
Keep in mind that Einstein is a DHS program for monitoring the security of government networks from an internal point of view. It consolidates information from participating agencies' firewalls, intrusion detection systems, malware detection, anti-virus scanners, etc,. It has nothing to do with monitoring anyone or anything aside from government-owned systems, government-owned internal networks (i.e. the LAN in a government office building), and the actions of government employees using those internal government-owned stems and networks. In other words, it's exactly the same sort of thing every major company, university, or other organization does in their security operations centers.
Whether or not the data should be kept around for research purposes is a worthwhile question, although publishing it would require a lot of sanitization to avoid revealing data that would be useful to attackers (for instance, the name, IP address, and precise version number of every firewall within a given agency).
But in this case it's not about covering up any surveillance or information gathering on public behavior.
How about records of one or more government agencies intruding into other government agency's or branch's networks?
For instance, could there be evidence contained in those logs of TLAs intruding into the networks of Congress, the SCOTUS, etc?
Never mind TLAs spying on normal everyday citizens. The Executive Branch has been quite cavalier of late in spying on those in the other branches of government, particularly when said other branches may be deciding whether or not to exercise their duty and ability to limit the Executive Branch's power and scope.
This data could provide hard evidence regarding just how extensive and pervasive these practices have become.
Strat