NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst • Hacker News Board

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#21

Post by zxcdw » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:38 AM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #13

kennywinker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then they'll have to flee the country like that "traitor" Snowden? Not saying it wouldn't be the right thing to do, but I am saying it would definitely come at a cost to them and their friends.

Why? A colleague of Tice's told him a few weeks ago that every domestic communication is being recorded. Tice is now a private citizen, and he has every right to tell us that colleague's name. But he won't, and I suspect that the reason is that his claim is fanciful.

> But he won't, and I suspect that the reason is that his claim is fanciful.

Do you find this more probable than the fact that by giving out a name he'd set up his friend between a rock and a hard place?

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#22

Post by EdSharkey » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:41 AM UTC

OF COURSE they'd store the contents of our communication, it would be foolish for them not to now that they have the means! The algorithms for speech to text are probably near perfect by now, especially since they have SO MUCH sample data to work with. I doubt you'd need to store the raw audio data, just turn the transcript into full text "metadata".

The main issue is that our information is being stored - INDEFINITELY. You've got to be naive to think this data won't be abused eventually. It will be sold, or it will be used to control. Reading between the lines in some of these news stories, I have to believe that all the walls between the civil and law enforcement agencies are coming down, and it's all one big data mart FTW.

We must bar them from generally capturing and storing information about us. A crime needs to be under investigation about an individual or group before the data capture can begin.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#23

Post by srean » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:41 AM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #13

kennywinker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then they'll have to flee the country like that "traitor" Snowden? Not saying it wouldn't be the right thing to do, but I am saying it would definitely come at a cost to them and their friends.

Why? A colleague of Tice's told him a few weeks ago that every domestic communication is being recorded. Tice is now a private citizen, and he has every right to tell us that colleague's name. But he won't, and I suspect that the reason is that his claim is fanciful.

If rights were really respected we wouldnt have this, now I am at loss for words so am settling with clusterF#$%, to begin with.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#24

Post by streetwiseherc » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:42 AM UTC

As a software developer, which companies (if any) can we trust when selecting programming stacks and hosting solutions. I'm currently not doing anything illegal (that I know of), but I don't like the idea of supporting those who conspire with the government (even if they're 'forced to'). I'd feel pretty 'unclean' about supporting anything that came out of or was associated with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. Who does that leave???

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#25

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:47 AM UTC

clicks wrote: post #16

fixxer wrote: post #8

Nice to see somebody pointing out the obvious bullshit regarding the Utah facility's real purpose (content storage, not metadata). What kind of iron do you need to run NLP on a day's worth of content (let's limit "content" to voice transcriptions from phone calls)? Suppose I want to pick out "bomb" in near real-time? How many $billions for total information awareness? Even the best algo is going to produce false posi…

I'm curious about the storage media they might have... is it just plain old rotational harddrives? Who made them -- Seagate? Western Digital? It's curious that no word has come out from that front -- "wow, this customer is requesting a _LOT_ of storage devices... like, more storage space than what is available in the world". And really, because of this I think the idea that they might have some in-house innovation is…

Uncompressed, 1 hour of phone audio is only ~29MB (8KB/sec*3600s/h). Compressing it for storage can send that way down. Let's assume to 6MB. If every 300M Americans talked for an hour a day, that's only 2TB a day for call audio.

Edit: That's only one-way, so double. But compression can eliminate most of that, as there's usually only audio on one side of a call at a time. Anyways, even if I'm right within a factor of 10 or so, it doesn't really seem like a suspiciously high volume of disks.

(Disclaimer: I'm very drowsy just been woken up due to a datacenter coolant failure so maybe I miscalculated it.)

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:54 AM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #13

kennywinker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then they'll have to flee the country like that "traitor" Snowden? Not saying it wouldn't be the right thing to do, but I am saying it would definitely come at a cost to them and their friends.

Why? A colleague of Tice's told him a few weeks ago that every domestic communication is being recorded. Tice is now a private citizen, and he has every right to tell us that colleague's name. But he won't, and I suspect that the reason is that his claim is fanciful.

[deleted]

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#27

Post by rhizome » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 6:06 AM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #13

kennywinker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then they'll have to flee the country like that "traitor" Snowden? Not saying it wouldn't be the right thing to do, but I am saying it would definitely come at a cost to them and their friends.

Why? A colleague of Tice's told him a few weeks ago that every domestic communication is being recorded. Tice is now a private citizen, and he has every right to tell us that colleague's name. But he won't, and I suspect that the reason is that his claim is fanciful.

Recent history tells us there's proof out there, and that it typically follows a denial by Obama or the intelligence communities.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#28

Post by cpeterso » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 6:18 AM UTC

clicks wrote: post #16

fixxer wrote: post #8

Nice to see somebody pointing out the obvious bullshit regarding the Utah facility's real purpose (content storage, not metadata). What kind of iron do you need to run NLP on a day's worth of content (let's limit "content" to voice transcriptions from phone calls)? Suppose I want to pick out "bomb" in near real-time? How many $billions for total information awareness? Even the best algo is going to produce false posi…

I'm curious about the storage media they might have... is it just plain old rotational harddrives? Who made them -- Seagate? Western Digital? It's curious that no word has come out from that front -- "wow, this customer is requesting a _LOT_ of storage devices... like, more storage space than what is available in the world". And really, because of this I think the idea that they might have some in-house innovation is…

The NSA probably purchases hardware from multiple vendors, through multiple fronts.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#29

Post by Achshar » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 6:20 AM UTC

clicks wrote: post #16

fixxer wrote: post #8

Nice to see somebody pointing out the obvious bullshit regarding the Utah facility's real purpose (content storage, not metadata). What kind of iron do you need to run NLP on a day's worth of content (let's limit "content" to voice transcriptions from phone calls)? Suppose I want to pick out "bomb" in near real-time? How many $billions for total information awareness? Even the best algo is going to produce false posi…

I'm curious about the storage media they might have... is it just plain old rotational harddrives? Who made them -- Seagate? Western Digital? It's curious that no word has come out from that front -- "wow, this customer is requesting a _LOT_ of storage devices... like, more storage space than what is available in the world". And really, because of this I think the idea that they might have some in-house innovation is…

There are conspiracy theories out there that the whole flooding of the facilities which lead to supply shortage was just a coverup for NSA's order. I don't buy into such FAD, but until a few months ago I wouldn't have bought into the whole NSA thing either. So who knows.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#30

Post by Sven7 » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 6:21 AM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #20

So it's now in the realm of maybe-to-probable that the NSA has every domestic phone call on tape as well as some non-trivial sized chunk of all emails sent? Plus for sure has all metadata they can get their hands on? Plus cable taps on most (all?) internet backbones?

Maybe SETI should try a SETI@NSA