Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 66 posts

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

#21

Post by cracell »

mladenkovacevic wrote: post #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.

Why not all 3 and throw in the US as well?

The goal is too record everything which means implementing programs like this in as many countries as they can. Actually identifying which countries such programs are currently operating in would be tricky without a leak. It's a real shame this article didn't publish it.

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

#22

Post by poulson »

cracell wrote: post #21
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #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.

Why not all 3 and throw in the US as well? The goal is too record everything which means implementing programs like this in as many countries as they can. Actually identifying which countries such programs are currently operating in would be tricky without a leak. It's a real shame this article didn't publish it.

This makes me wonder how Greenwald, Gellman, and Poitras come to a consensus on what to hold back. Clearly they all have access to the data and it would be possible (read: very likely) for them to disagree on what should and should not be withheld.

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

#23

Post by noblethrasher »

spikels wrote: post #18
noblethrasher wrote: post #4

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 compr…

Agreed. I didn't have any reliable numbers at the time so I overestimated in favor of making it more expensive.

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

#24

Post by qwerta »

It says NSA only keeps 1 month of voice records. I think they store everything for couple of years, perhaps indefinitely. Storing all that voice is very cheap and is too juicy to let go. Also there were rumors about this recording for the past 30 years.

GSM voice codec has rate 13 kbit/s. 6 billion people x 1 hour of talking per day = 6e9 x 3600 x 13/8 = 35 TB/day.

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

#25

Post by schoen »

spikels wrote: post #13

"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," Mr. Obama said. "That's not what this program is about." It's about recording your calls to listen to later.

In this context, the troubles with that statement are "your" and "this program".

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130729/12223823986/senat...

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

#26

Post by abecedarius »

cklaus wrote: post #7
noblethrasher wrote: post #4

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).

What does it cost to transcribe All VOICE calls ->TEXT for faster analysis, apply DEEP learning to it, and apply a graph of Everyone bigger than Facebook to these patterns?

Just going by energy need I back-of-the-envelope estimated the Bluffdale center could run voice recognition on all U.S. voice calls, yes. I'd guess it's not the best use of that much power, currently, but it'll only get easier.

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

#27

Post by saraid216 »

rdtsc wrote: 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…

> they might find you downloaded strange foot fetish porn when you were in college and try to blackmail you.

So, you'll join the fight to make this a non-scandalous point of concern, right?

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

#28

Post by Crito »

qwerta wrote: post #24

It says NSA only keeps 1 month of voice records. I think they store everything for couple of years, perhaps indefinitely. Storing all that voice is very cheap and is too juicy to let go. Also there were rumors about this recording for the past 30 years. GSM voice codec has rate 13 kbit/s. 6 billion people x 1 hour of talking per day = 6e9 x 3600 x 13/8 = 35 TB/day .

Even if they only store the most of it for a month, I will eat my shorts if they do not use ML or plain old "intelligence" to select much of it for indefinite storage.

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

#29

Post by paulannesley »

rootuid wrote: 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.

> Therefore there is no point to the article.

I disagree. What difference does it make _which_ foreign country the article refers to?

The fact that 100% of calls made by all people in a country are being recorded by another country is enough.

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

#30

Post by thibauts »

rdtsc wrote: 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…

This is really nauseating. Which kind of world are we letting happen ?
Post reply on HN