NSA has some problems despite it having access to all the information on citizens that they can digest. The industry observers have warned that the surveillance agency knows too much.

Media reports confirm that the National Security Agency cannot understand the information it collects simply because it is too much to do anything useful with it. Perhaps, the NSA’s addiction to personal information had made it dysfunctional and the outfit is slowly drowning in useless data. Some say that the NSA is a place where agents are swamped with so much data that they can’t do their jobs effectively, while the enormous stockpile is a constant irresistible temptation for misuse.

This is not a surprise for those who have heard concerns revealed in the Snowden documents. An internal briefing paper dated last year about foreign mobile phone location tracking by the NSA already read that the efforts were outpacing its ability to ingest, process and store information. A few months ago, some NSA experts asked for permission to gather less information because the relatively small intelligence value it contains couldn’t justify the sheer volume of collection.

The problem isn't solely the amount of data. Its their ability to search it and the depth they can learn. The new data centre has the aim to simply store and then search. Thinking they are bogged down by the amount of data seems like false hope.

good read
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_4538367.html