We don't let a car company just throw out a car and start driving it around without checking that the wheels are fastened on. We know that would result in death; but for some reason we have no hesitation at throwing out some algorithms untested and unmonitored even when they're making very important life-and-death decisions.

Google is so big you have no idea what a given person does.

The NSA buys data from private companies, so the private companies are the source of all this stuff.

We don't let a car company just throw out a car and start driving it around without checking that the wheels are fastened on. We know that would result in death; but for some reason we have no hesitation at throwing out some algorithms untested and unmonitored even when they're making very important life-and-death decisions.

There are lots of different ways that algorithms can go wrong, and what we have now is a system in which we assume because it's shiny new technology with a mathematical aura that it's perfect and it doesn't require further vetting. Of course, we never have that assumption with other kinds of technology.

Obviously the more transparency we have as auditors, the more we can get, but the main goal is to understand important characteristics about a black box algorithm without necessarily having to understand every single granular detail of the algorithm.

We can't just throw something out there and assume it works just because it has math in it.