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How the NSA tracks people [video]

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Re: How the NSA tracks people [video]

#81

Post by Retra »

jancsika wrote: post #53

Here's something that pops in my head every time Binney comes up, but I've never quite articulated it... Let's just assume for the moment that outcome X is good while outcome Y is bad. (I know most people wouldn't agree with that as applied to the NSA's history of wide-net surveillance, but just stick with me...) You design a system that technically delivers outcome X. It could technically deliver outcome Y, but you…

Can't you take it as an axiom that if someone can build something that can do Y, that you should assume its construction is inevitable? And isn't it always better to be the one building it first than to be the one building it second?

Re: How the NSA tracks people [video]

#82

Post by stordoff »

londons_explore wrote: post #70
megous wrote: post #14

So a quick calculation. 1 zettabyte if stored on 4GB HDD, that's 250 million hard drives. That's without any redundancy. Quarterly production of hard drives is around 100-140 million. That's quite a big slice of global production. The buying operation of this scale should be visible somewhere on the price charts.

No need to store all the data. One can probably leave out all the torrents, youtube and netflix videos that fly across the internet. Stick to text of emails, calls and chats only. Suddenly you only need a few thousand drives.

Even if you do need that data, you can probably dedupe the large sites fairly easily. Save one copy, then just record the ID of the video watched/downloaded.

Re: How the NSA tracks people [video]

#83

Post by zeep »

megous wrote: post #62
zeep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean if stored on 4TB HDD... but they could easily cut that 250 million in half by using 8TB drives.

8TB HDD were manufactured only since 2014.

not sure when they came out but pretty sure that you could get 8TB SSDs before that

Re: How the NSA tracks people [video]

#84

Post by megous »

zeep wrote: post #83
megous wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8TB HDD were manufactured only since 2014.

not sure when they came out but pretty sure that you could get 8TB SSDs before that

Buying 100 mil. 8TB SSDs when SSD market is even smaller than HDD market would be not possible without everyone noticing. That's entire year (2015) of total SSD units production. 8TB drives would be at the time a tiny fraction of the total.

Re: How the NSA tracks people [video]

#85

Post by zeep »

megous wrote: post #84
zeep wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure when they came out but pretty sure that you could get 8TB SSDs before that

Buying 100 mil. 8TB SSDs when SSD market is even smaller than HDD market would be not possible without everyone noticing. That's entire year (2015) of total SSD units production. 8TB drives would be at the time a tiny fraction of the total.

I think that you underestimate the US Government... they are not a regular consumer...
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