Test post courtesy of Arstechnica.com

I've written extensively on the many basic problems that make all government-run, computer-automated mass surveillance programs a waste of taxpayer money. But a new report (PDF) from the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence shows in some detail how our government took the bad idea of building powerful computers to sniff out a terrorist needle in a digital haystack, then made it even less useful in practice.