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NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

washingtonpost.com

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#11
I wonder if it's not Afghanistan, Iran or any of the usual suapecta but actually Canada. We've got a puppet federal government submissive to US demands.. A small number of large NSA friendly telcos that reach a large majority of the population, and a large number of immigrants from all over the world. Perfect testing ground for such a system.

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#12
Read foreign country as US here too.

Basically they can record everything and a constitutionally defined "search" doesn't occur unless a human search and looks at the information.

Binney and other were talking about this even long before Snowden.

So what happens now, everything you do gets recorded, stored in their data center and kept for decades. As soon as you do anything they deem suspicious they might find you downloaded strange foot fetish porn when you were in college and try to blackmail you.

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#14
post #12

Read foreign country as US here too. Basically they can record everything and a constitutionally defined "search" doesn't occur unless a human search and looks at the information. Binney and other were talking about this even long before Snowden. So what happens now, everything you do gets recorded, stored in their data center and kept for decades. As soon as you do anything they deem suspicious they might find you d…

Echelon and Carnivore.

We have been talking about this since the 80s....

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#15
post #2

"At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned" Therefore there is no point to the article.

The status quo is then restored. All this article is is chest-pounding by the US to warn potential competitors in the global sphere of influence.

Or it could serve as a signal that the US is the best country to align with, since they know everything.

This whole NSA debacle could serve as an impressive advertisement for the strength and stability of the industrial spying complex, justifying great investment and pushing important business objectives.

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#16
post #12

Read foreign country as US here too. Basically they can record everything and a constitutionally defined "search" doesn't occur unless a human search and looks at the information. Binney and other were talking about this even long before Snowden. So what happens now, everything you do gets recorded, stored in their data center and kept for decades. As soon as you do anything they deem suspicious they might find you d…

Evidence?

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#17
post #2

"At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned" Therefore there is no point to the article.

The status quo is then restored. All this article is is chest-pounding by the US to warn potential competitors in the global sphere of influence.

What is wrong with that? The program described in the article is legal.

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#18

I posted this spreadsheet in another thread to give an idea of the cost of storing all of the nation's calls. I figured an annual cost of about $11 million. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqWtA_3af-R0dE5... (the spreadsheet allows editing, so you all can play with the numbers).

I'm pretty sure 96,000 bits/s vastly overstates the required storage. Common VoIP codecs uses as little as 5,300 bits/s[1] and military communication systems typically only require 2,400 bits/s and can go as low as 600 bits/sec[2]. Note: this is before all the transport overhead.

And this is for live communications. Recorded voice communication can be compressed further. For example the popular G.729 VoIP codec compresses down to something like 1,000 bits/sec in archives from it's normal 8,000 bits/s required during a live call[3]. Although lower bandwidth codecs probably don't compress as much.

Please correct me if I am wrong - not an expert.

[1] http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-qualit...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FNBDT#Voice_compression_using_V...

[3] http://call-recording.tmcnet.com/topics/call-recording/artic...

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#19
post #12

Read foreign country as US here too. Basically they can record everything and a constitutionally defined "search" doesn't occur unless a human search and looks at the information. Binney and other were talking about this even long before Snowden. So what happens now, everything you do gets recorded, stored in their data center and kept for decades. As soon as you do anything they deem suspicious they might find you d…

Evidence?

The article is evidence of the capability. And if you look at other leaks you see a clear pattern of them vacuuming up all the data they possibly can.

Then take into consideration their budget and various data centers and it seems that they are capable of doing this at any scale desired.

So they've shown the desire and capability. It's not direct evidence but it's pretty strong.

Re: NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The status quo is then restored. All this article is is chest-pounding by the US to warn potential competitors in the global sphere of influence.

What is wrong with that? The program described in the article is legal.

If it's legal, then we need to change the laws.
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