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

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

#41

Post by acqq »

kennywinker wrote: post #37
er0k wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprint...

Very interesting. The tl;dr seems to be: nobody knows for sure, but yes... it could totally be used for full content storage for some length of time.

No, it's not "nobody knows for sure." If you do the right math and don't assume that they have the storage technology not available to the rest of the world (which is a reasonable assumption) it's obvious that the data storage in an accessible way inside that center has an upper bound of an order of around one exabyte (1e18) (a million terabytes). So it's even more probable that it's less, say 0.2 EB.

Now somebody here claims it's around 1e7 B compressed for an hour of phone talk (not transcribed only compressed). That gives 2e10 hours stored. Storing it for 2e8 Americans there's space for 100 hours per person. But they also want the world, not only Americans.

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

#43

Post by xSwag »

panarky wrote: post #40
MichaelGG wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're off by three orders of magnitude. 6 MB * 300 million = 1716 TB

You're right, but that's only the calls one way. It should really be times by 2.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6+MB+*+300+million

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

#44

Post by cheald »

So here's my startup idea:

Stenographically-encoded messages in high-def porn. It's secure communications with a built-in subscription model!

Porn accounts for a huge chunk of internet traffic today, and video doesn't compress too well. Get enough people exchanging messages in porn videos and all of a sudden, those listening in have a whole hell of a lot more bytes to sift through.

(I'm only half joking.)

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

#46

Post by berkut »

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…

In 1977, NSA were planning to have 157 GB of storage: http://cryptome.org/2013/03/cryptologs/cryptolog_28.pdf

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

#47

Post by VerilyForsooth »

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?

No, it's not. Really. The only people who believe they are collecting the content of calls, as well as all browser traffic etc, of EVERYONE, are demented and braindead conspiracy theorists. Of which there happen to be many in the tech community.

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

#48

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #45

Crazy idea: software that would generate TBs of fake communications (email, skype calls, etc) daily to disrupt NSA operations. Possible? Helpful?

This is not crazy. This has been done for centuries.

You send five messages that are not true and one which is, and have some way to know the truth.

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

#49

Post by northwest »

> He claims the NSA tapped the phone of high-level government officials and the news media 10 years ago.

That would explain why Obama seems to have become the best sheep ever:

1. Spy on them

2. Collect everything that's somehow "embarrassing" for them

3. Regularly remind them of what happens if they don't do what would want them to do

By that logic, they have probably "vetted" Obama thoroughly, before deciding to not discredit/destroy him completely in front of the public.

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

#50

Post by yen223 »

Achshar wrote: post #29
clicks wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to work in Western Digital. This is possibly the easiest conspiracy theory to debunk, since anyone who lived in Bangkok can confirm that the floods were very much real.
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