The civil libertarian in me is appalled at the NSA phone records from Verizon (and likely others) and backdoor access to the data from Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc.

The engineer in me is fascinated at how import all that data, what they’d store it on (EMC Isilon) and how they would process it and retrive it. It’s a perfect example of the need for people who understand “big data.”

I’m so conflicted.