Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything being discussed in the context of leaks is by definition in the past. Use them to inform your understanding of the NSA mindset, not your understanding of current events. "Phone" is just an obsolete pre-2010s term here for the exact kind of pattern analysis you're describing. I dislike the premise behind "it's all encrypted and we cannot do that anymore" since we have no idea what capabilities an agency lik…
>> Why do you assume a human has to be involved in the judgement process for it to be taking place? I don't. A human is not necessary to the process. A human is necessary for the process to be done well . And if the NSA has broken its own encryption, to the extent that it can read past traffic, call the IMU because there are some Field's medals that need handing out.
The UK equivalent of the NSA invented both RSA encryption and DH key exchange years before any of Diffie, Hellman, Rivest, Shamir, or Adleman did their work. No Fields medal per se, but two Turing awards...
I think the odds that the largest employer of mathematicians in the world is secretly sitting on ground breaking fundamental math is pretty high.