All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords • Hacker News Board

Re: All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

#51

Post by roel_v » Wed, Jun 12, 2013, 8:14 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #33

lostlogin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? So you can have attacks on your country without requiring the world to go into lockdown, without having to invade several countries and without having to molest every traveler?

"without requiring the world to go into lockdown, without having to invade several countries and without having to molest every traveler?" Have you ever been here? There are cameras on all highways that recognize license plates and track the movement over every car on the road network (cfr: the ease with which they tracked the whereabouts of the father who killed his children a few weeks ago), it has the most phone t…

I should put a nuance on my remark that police can ask for ID without cause; after looking a bit deeper into it, this is not entirely true. There has to be cause but that is defined very broadly. Examples mentioned on the government website on when police can ask for ID, and when they can take you into custody when you can't, include 'a car driving around at night in an industrial area', 'there is a shooting in a pub and for the inquiry it is necessary to establish who are the witnesses', 'youth are being a nuisance in the neighbourhood', 'there is a fire and the arsonist might be amongst the spectators' (!).

Not quite 'papieren, bitte' yet, and not as dramatic as I made it sound, but still not what one would expect in a land claiming to value freedom. (my other points still stand though, including those about the 'no cause search' zones)

Re: All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

#52

Post by derf_ » Wed, Jun 12, 2013, 8:58 PM UTC

ohwp wrote: post #12

lucb1e wrote: post #2

I call bullshit. Phone metadata is saved since forever yes, but stored at ISPs, not at government organisations. There are strict regulations regarding the privacy of voice data over the phone (VoIP does not count as such though), and I don't think the secret service and military secret service (AIVD and MIVD) can do anything they like. They have more permissions, such as demanding passwords for encrypted files as lo…

I agree this is a bullshit story. They only store conversations when they have an eavesdrop approval. A lot of people underestimate the amount of storage it would take to store all voice data.

So let's estimate:

http://www.telegeography.com/press/press-releases/2012/01/09... says there were 438 billion international (because that's all the NSA collects, right?) calling minutes in 2011 (in the world... not just the Netherlands).

Aberdeen will sell you 1 PB of storage for $495k: http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/petarack.htm

A narrowband speech codec will encode calls in excellent quality (for the PSTN) at 12 kbps.

So that's 438 * 10^9 minutes * 60 seconds/minute * 12000 bits/second / (8 bits/byte * 10^15 bytes/petabyte) (using lying harddrive manufacturer's definitions of a petabyte) = 39.42 PB.

Or less than $20mln/year. Which of course is the quoted budget of PRISM.

Re: All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

#53

Post by X-Istence » Wed, Jun 12, 2013, 9:10 PM UTC

jvdongen wrote: post #45

yread wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dutch took part in both operation enduring freedom and iraqi freedom. So you could say they did invade several countries.

In fact the Dutch owned New York once (then called New Amsterdam ;-) until they effectively traded it with the British for Suriname and some spare change. And that whole Dutch East Indies and Indonesia thing still has some repercussions till this day.

The Dutch still have parts of The Netherlands overseas, including people that can vote in the Dutch elections, along with territories that are overseen not by the Dutch government but by the King (used to be the Queen).

Re: All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

#54

Post by X-Istence » Wed, Jun 12, 2013, 9:14 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #43

toyg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe my POV is skewed by having MAN as home airport - security here is horrendous, slow, invasive and obsessed with trying every new braindead security scheme under the sun, including the infamous pornscanners. Schiphol was not that bad the few times I've used it (last three weeks ago), IIRC they do the actual scan at gates which I think is always the superior option. Completely agree on the EU/US comparison, of cou…

I've been to Shithole 4 times (I try to avoid it though). I've been subjected to the pornscanners every time.

You do know you can opt-out right? They actually have forms and posters hanging up informing you of your right to opt-out.

All outbound travel to the US has to go through the porno scanners, each and every time I have flown to the US I have opted out, just like I have opted out each time I get asked to go through the porno scanner in the US...

They don't make a fuss about it either, they just ask you to stand with your legs spread wide and arms spread and do a pat down/magnetic wand.

Not as bad as the US where you get put into a sort of metal "hot box" where you are told to wait till they can find someone with a low enough IQ to grope you, followed by the question if you really want to opt-out, and the agent doing everything in his power to make it as uncomfortable for the person they are checking as possible. Only that tends to backfire on them, cause most of those idiots are giant homophobes... so playing with them while getting groped is kinda fun.

Re: All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

#55

Post by SigmundA » Wed, Jun 12, 2013, 9:14 PM UTC

derf_ wrote: post #52

ohwp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this is a bullshit story. They only store conversations when they have an eavesdrop approval. A lot of people underestimate the amount of storage it would take to store all voice data.

So let's estimate: http://www.telegeography.com/press/press-releases/2012/01/09... says there were 438 billion international (because that's all the NSA collects, right?) calling minutes in 2011 (in the world... not just the Netherlands). Aberdeen will sell you 1 PB of storage for $495k: http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/petarack.htm A narrowband speech codec will encode calls in excellent quality (for the PSTN) at 1…

Your not counting bandwidth, cpu, facility and personnel charges required to pull this off, raw storage is a minor part of the cost.

Re: All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

#56

Post by derf_ » Wed, Jun 12, 2013, 10:44 PM UTC

SigmundA wrote: post #55

derf_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's estimate: http://www.telegeography.com/press/press-releases/2012/01/09... says there were 438 billion international (because that's all the NSA collects, right?) calling minutes in 2011 (in the world... not just the Netherlands). Aberdeen will sell you 1 PB of storage for $495k: http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/petarack.htm A narrowband speech codec will encode calls in excellent quality (for the PSTN) at 1…

Your not counting bandwidth, cpu, facility and personnel charges required to pull this off, raw storage is a minor part of the cost.

I'm not actually trying to imply that this is what PRISM does (no one has made that claim). I'm just saying that on a government scale, the cost of storing all voice calls ever made forever is not even very expensive.

So let's add bandwidth: the most expensive estimate I've seen is $0.019/GB " rel="nofollow">http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/04/07/what-does-a-gigaby.... Let's assume the original audio is captured using G.711 (64 kbps). So that's 438 * 10^9 minutes * 60 seconds/minute * 64000 bits/second / (8 bits/byte * 1024^3 bytes/GB) * $0.019/GB = $3.72mln.

Let's add CPU: A medium-sized, high-CPU AWS instance is $0.0024/minute " rel="nofollow">http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/>. A moderate laptop-class processor can encode and decode 150 channels/core in real time " rel="nofollow">http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rtcweb/current/msg05236.... So that's 438 * 10^9 call minutes * $0.0024/CPU minute / 150 call minutes/CPU minute = $7.01mln.

Facility: The NSA's Utah facility is projected to cost $1.5...$2bln " rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center> and will contain a 100,000 square foot data center " rel="nofollow">http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/>. A 42U rack is about 7 square feet. Let's assume a floor occupancy of 25%. That's $2bln/facility / 10000 ft^2/facility * (7/0.25) ft^2/PB * 40 PB = $22.4mln.

I don't have a good estimate of the personnel involved, but I doubt it'd require anything out of the ballpark of the other numbers here. You could have every rack maintained and operated by its own PhD-level researcher at less than $10mln/year including all overhead and benefits.

A single JSF F-35A has a $207.6mln procurement cost (excluding R&D costs, maintenance costs, and operating costs) " rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II#Program_cost_....