I mentioned that the huge amount of asteroids is a Big Data problem. The term Big Data is often misunderstood. Even by people, who should have a professional understanding of the problem. Big Data doesn’t mean to collect information. Collecting information can result in Big Data, but doesn’t need to. Big Data is a question of scale. Big Data means that an amount of information can’t be handled by humans! Because human skills are limited. If the amount of information, that was gathered or otherwise acquired, surpasses a certain threshold, then human skills aren’t enough anymore for the sake of processing the data. Hence it is called Big Data. This means that you need at least the help of a computer. The Google Books project is a Big Data project because there exists already a huge amount of books of paper and they are digitized in this project. But it isn’t a Big Data project because it is Google project, it is only a Big Data project because the amount of existing books is unimaginable huge. Big Data isn’t defined as something that Google or Apple or Microsoft or Amazon does. The no longer existing “social” network Google+ was collecting data. Doing this wasn’t Big Data. Everybody can ask information about other people, also without the help of a computer. But you won’t get much. A “social” network gets so much data that it can’t be processed without the help of a computer. So the result is Big Data. But if you make a survey asking your neighbors something, then this won’t result in Big Data. If you type the result into your computer, then it still won’t become Big Data! Because this isn’t a necessary step. When the amount is small enough to transfer it through typing, then it certainly isn’t Big Data.

Big companies, but also governments produce Big Data. When governments feel the need for a complete surveillance because of security reasons, then a huge amount of data is generated. This is nowadays already on a level, where it can’t be handled without the help of computers anymore. Hence it is Big Data. This is a huge problem for prosecution because this means that all the proves and evidences, which must be provided in every state, which respects basic rights, can only be found and handled correctly by computer programs, which don’t exist yet.