General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsStatistics on phone calls, text messages, emails,etc.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_phone_calls_are_made_daily_in_the_USQuestion: Hope many on average phones are made a day in US
I estimate about 2 billion calls are made in a day.
http://email.about.com/od/emailtrivia/f/emails_per_day.htm
Question: How Many Emails Are Sent Every Day?
Answer: Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from April 2010 estimate the number of emails sent per day (in 2010) to be around 294 billion.
294 billion messages per day means more than 2.8 million emails are sent every second and some 90 trillion emails are sent per year. Around 90% of these millions and trillions of message are but spam and viruses.
The genuine emails are sent by around 1.9 billion email users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging
In the United States, text messaging is also popular; as reported by CTIA in December 2009, the 286 million US subscribers sent 152.7 billion text messages per month, for an average of 534 messages per subscriber per month.[33] The Pew Research Center found in May 2010 that 72% of U.S. adult cellphone users send and receive text messages.[34]
In the U.S., SMS is often charged both at the sender and at the destination, but, unlike phone calls, it cannot be rejected or dismissed. The reasons for lower uptake than other countries are variedmany users have unlimited "mobile-to-mobile" minutes, high monthly minute allotments, or unlimited service. Moreover, push to talk services offer the instant connectivity of SMS and are typically unlimited. Furthermore, the integration between competing providers and technologies necessary for cross-network text messaging has only been available recently. Some providers originally charged extra to enable use of text, further reducing its usefulness and appeal. In the third quarter of 2006, at least 12 billion text messages crossed AT&T's network, up almost 15 percent from the preceding quarter.
In the United States, while texting is widely popular among the ages of 1322 years old, it is increasing among adults and business users as well. The age that a child receives his/her first cell phone has also decreased, making text messaging a very popular way of communication for all ages. The number of texts being sent in the United States has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an average of $0.10 per text sent and received.
In order to convince more customers to include text messaging plans, some major cellphone providers have recently increased the price to send and receive text messages from $.15 to $.20 per message.[35][36] This is over $1,300 per megabyte.[37] Many providers offer unlimited plans, which can result in a lower rate per text given sufficient volume.
So, tell me how the NSA manages to listen, read all this information?
randome
(34,845 posts)I know because a guy in Hong Kong told me.
Thanks for digging up the statistics. It won't be good enough for some but it's great to have it out there.
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[font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font]
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warrior1
(12,325 posts)It took like two minutes to look up.
Go Vols
(5,902 posts)http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
FSogol
(45,488 posts)HappyMe
(20,277 posts)They have to have something to munch on while they sift through the kitteh pictures, drunk texts, and horrifically boring phone calls.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)They fall into 4 categories:
1. Self actualization: I am here.............in the produce aisle
2. Human Desires: "I don't know where they keep the Ho-hos" or in a Barry White voice, "Hey Baby..."
3. Incomprehensible: "uh huh.....yeah, uh huh..."
4. Never-ending: So Suze says to Brenda, no way! and I say, you didna girl, so she says nope, I 'm not play'n that, so I say...."
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)on the sidewalk.....
Those are pretty much the kind of calls I get treated to also. I did hear 1/2 of a nasty argument the other day.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)If Instr(text, "kitteh"
goto forgetIt
elseif Instr(text, "mom"
goto forgetIt
elseif Instr(text, "poser"
goto forgetIt
And so on and so on.
Of course a devious terrorist would write something like this:
"Don't forget to tell the kitteh that muffins will arrive at 8pm."
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[font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font]
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HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)contacts, etc. and also able to pull it up should an individual raise their suspicions.
and that includes individuals involved in innocuous protest groups (e.g. raging grannies), disputes with local government or police, etc.
or anyone.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)<crickets>
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)of most of the population of east germany. it's just like stasi files and you're defending it.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)population and nsa maintaining files on most of the population.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)Pholus
(4,062 posts)This program is, in the nihilistic sense, completely a waste of money then!
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)on what date, at what time.
and that's what 'metadata' is.
+ the ability to call up the contents of those meetings should the need arise.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)fucking deal.
and since one 'warrant' covers millions of people, nothing specific about such 'warrants' either. just fishing, just 'we want the data so we'll do a proforma request in our secret court of one connected judge'.
not to mention that under bush they didn't even need a warrant and they've been moving back to that position.
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)covers the meta data which technically they would only need a supeona for according to the SCOTUS since it isn't protected under the 4th Am. FISA clearly outlines that US Persons can't be targeted, furthermore we are also protected by the ECPA but since nobody wants to actually read FISA it has all become hearsay & hyperbole.
I know there are major issues with the entire system, I just think the facts are getting lost & distorted something serious.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)why those 'warrants' cover millions. because what *can't* be incidentally connected to terror through a chain of connections?
Pholus
(4,062 posts)They built that building in Utah for just $20 million bucks? I gotta find that contractor!
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. (Wired)
FSogol
(45,488 posts)Greenwald's first article, unless he's walked that back already.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)This estimate is from the guy who does the internet archive so he ought to know...
http://blog.archive.org/2013/06/15/cost-to-store-all-us-phonecalls-made-in-a-year-in-cloud-storage-so-it-could-be-datamined/
But that totally turns my numbers on its head and NOT in the NSA's favor.
1) Metadata -- data volume easily fits on a single server
2) "Boundless Informer" -- ditto
3) Prism -- 20 million dollars. Actually MUCH cheaper than my initial estimates given what they said they had.
So why are so many contractors needed? Why the huge expansion in data storage space at the NSA? Why the deals with "thousands" of companies to get their databases? Why the DARPA interest in "anomaly detection in large databases?
And it looks like the cost of the disclosed programs are like 40 million (generous) versus a total estimated budget of 10-20 billion. What do you suppose the rest of the money gets used for?
Jarla
(156 posts)FreeState
(10,572 posts)snooper2
(30,151 posts)Jarla
(156 posts)Regardless, the source is totally unreliable, so I don't find it very helpful for the discussion.
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)The navy was sending Submarines into Russian Waters to plant taps on the undersea cables that were used thousands of times a day. That was with 1970's technology. Each tap pod was designed to gather the data by induction, because they could not risk cutting and splicing the cable underwater. Each pod was more advanced than the one before, recording for weeks, and then months. Later pods were programmed to scan conversations, recording only those with the best most valuable information. http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/holystone.htm
Again, this was with technology from the era that saw the slowly reducing use of vacuum tubes in televisions. The 8 track ruled the audio era because of it's convenience and ease of use. And we were designing and building pods that would attach to a cable on the outside, and through induction gather the phone calls from the soviet naval bases, to their higher commands, as well as hundreds of purely personal calls every day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-submergence_vehicle
So you tell me, if we could do that in the 1970's, what makes you think we are unable to manage something similar today? Has our technical sections of the intelligence business gotten dumber?
More info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
If you want a picture of the tap pod captured by the Soviet's, and on display in a museum in Moscow, more info at this site. http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/ic2000/ic2000.htm#N_32_
Tap pod captured by the Soviets inside their waters.
Tell me again why you think it is impossible?
warrior1
(12,325 posts)And too read all the emails or all the text.
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)For a machine to sort, catalog, and store? Nope. I was born during the ear of Apollo, when man did the impossible, and walked on the moon. Man has traveled to the deepest point on earth, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana's trench. Where the pressure is tons per square inch. We have flown aircraft at more than Mach 5, and built the most incredible flying machine in the form of the Space Shuttle. Now, all of those accomplishments are with notable exceptions, squashed by even more incredible technological achievements.
How many plucky little rover bots are running around, or have been running around on Mars? Where is Voyager 1 and 2? Those were probes made with much the same technology as the 1970's cable taps, and they're still beeping away sending back data as they scream out of the solar system at unimaginable speeds.
Place limits on mans ingenuity at your peril, history tells us that. Pearl Harbor was secure, because it was only 42 feet deep, and air dropped torpedoes needed at least 70 feet before the moved back to the surface.
Man could not fly, it was impossible.
I have a book full of quotes from experts who insist that something is either impossible, impractical, or unwanted. Like IBM's CEO who said that there would only be a need for three, or four computers in the world ever. There are that many in nearly every household today.
They can capture that much data, and they can process, filter, sort, and collate that much data. Disbelieve if you wish, if it makes you feel better, but as a simple engineering effort, knowing what they did forty years ago? I'd put my money on yes they can.
Th1onein
(8,514 posts)Which is just what they've done and will continue to do unless we raise holy hell about it.
MineralMan
(146,317 posts)Most are something like:
Mom! UR late. I nede 2 go 2 mall now, 4 crist saik!
or
rents out. cu soon.
or
billy i skiped my peroid
Teen Terrorist Code
Pholus
(4,062 posts)MineralMan
(146,317 posts)Algorithms to sort wheat from chaff are not trivial at all. Humams can do it easily, but not quickly. Computers do not understand English.
DiamondDog
(19 posts)What they do is store it and analyze it with computer driven algorithms. That is why they have built a data storage and analysis center in Utah(with yottabytes of capacity), and why they are building another one just like it in Maryland.
They can analyze all that data in numerous ways to the extent of finding out where you go, who your friends are, what you like, dislike, etc. Furthermore, beyond simple analysis, they can pull up all that stored data on you, me, anybody, and use it in the future against us.
The computer age has matured to the point where the spooks' wet dream is now being realized, one nation, under surveillance.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)As James Clapper admitted, "to me the collection of U.S. persons data would mean taking the books off the shelf, opening it up and reading it."
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)Given the facilitys scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a mans pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering. But so is the exponential growth in the amount of intelligence data being produced every day by the eavesdropping sensors of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. As a result of this expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks, as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (1024 bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytesso large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
--------
The yottabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix yotta indicates the eighth power of 1000 and means 1024 in the International System of Units (SI), and therefore one yottabyte is one septillion (one long scale quadrillion) bytes. The unit symbol for the yottabyte is YB.
1 YB = 1000000000000000000000000bytes = 10008bytes = 1024bytes = 1000zettabytes = 1 trillion terabytes.
A related unit, the yobibyte (YiB), using a binary prefix, means 10248bytes.
Examples
To store a yottabyte on terabyte sized hard drives would require a million city block size data-centers, as big as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island. (Wiki)
FSogol
(45,488 posts)"Given the facilitys scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a mans pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering."
That's like saying, Why is Madison Square Garden so big? Basketballs are only about 1 cubic foot in size.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)... but you want me to convert it to basketballs?
"The facility in Utah...needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Googles former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. And the data flow shows no sign of slowing. In 2011 more than 2 billion of the worlds 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSAs need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text." (Wired)
Pholus
(4,062 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)that's located near the break room for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)I mean, is he saying you only need one thumb drive in the data center just like you only need one basketball in Madison Square Garden?
I *guess* that makes sense if the data program is as small as we're being told.
But then why is the space so large? Is this more GSA-style government waste? Is the rest of the server room a bunch of Jacuzzis? Or is it a big star trek mockup bridge like the IRS videos? The mind boggles on the possibilities -- I just wish someone would build ME a million square foot facility when all I needed was a thumb drive....
So in this thread we have apologists pretending that everything collected MUST be listened to so it's purely impossible and we have apologists acting like a million square feet of facility is used for a single drive.
That's how you know they've lost control of the story.
Quick, release some new detail of Snowden's life from our massive hidden files!
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)Yeah love that logic, "they can't possibly listen to all those calls...so therefore it's a lie." I'm sure the computer geniuses in this country are laughing at that. Even I can call BS on that and I haven't even read all of 'Data Mining for Dummies.'
Agree the talking points are suffering from lack of logic.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)Last edited Thu Jun 20, 2013, 07:36 AM - Edit history (1)
complete nonsense. Maybe you've been into a building before? They have lights, wiring, walls, bathrooms, janitor closets, ceiling space, infrastructure, places for humans to move around and work, etc. Flashdrives do not. Yeah, I get it. Big building. Lots of storage. Lots of computer storage capability. But to pretend there is a size relationship? Utter stupidity. At any rate, flame on with your name calling.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Be careful, actual numbers in this post! Or, as you seem to call simple math, "utter stupidity".
If, like Barbie "math is hard" for you, just jump to the end for the insult, but it boils down to I'm absolutely sick and tired of the apologists pretending this stuff is impossible to figure out. I've heard how the NSA could never physically listen to the calls and read the emails, missing the point that storage makes it unnecessary and computers make the task easier. I've heard how the data volume is impossible to store as if the choices are do it all or do none of it. Oh yes, it is impossible to do it all so nobody is trying to do a fraction of it. Whatever.
So here is why the volume calculation works, allowing for more than one "basketball" in the center of course.
1 million square feet of NSA facility, 90% is for support. You know: "lights, wiring, walls, bathrooms, janitor closets, ceiling space, infrastructure, places for humans to move around and work" quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
100000 square feet are server space. By the NSA's numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
In a server room, a rule of thumb I've heard is that 33% of the space can be used for the servers racks. The rest is access and cooling.
33000 square feet of the floor may hold servers.
A 1U storage rack has a footprint of 19" wide by about 19" deep but you need about another foot of access space behind. Let's call it 3 feet. It is fair to say a server has a floor footprint of approximately five square feet.
So, you may place ~6500 server racks in the space available.
Now the one dimension the NSA doesn't want to talk about is height. It does matter, but lets assume for a moment the number the release represents only a single floor like a google data center. If they are standard full size 1U cabinets you can stack 42 1U servers floor to ceiling.
The space quoted as being available is capable of holding 270000 1U servers under a standard configuration.
Now the disk space in a 1U rack can vary wildly depending on how many disks you want to put inside. I can easily find a 10 bay 1U mount server if I want to use 2.5" drives instead of the standard 3.5" drives. However let's be fancy. Supermicro sells an 88 bay 4U unit which makes it 22 drives/1U of space.
1U of rack space effectively stores 22 drives. In a standard rack you can place 42 servers floor to ceiling. Place a 1TB drive (largest COTS 2.5" drive) in each bay. If you're fancy you'll use the new solid state drives which as of this year are in production. Less heat, less energy, longer life.
You can have 249480000 TB of disk space. That is 249480 PB or 249 EB.
Of course, if you use the dimension nobody talks about when giving stats for Utah, I am sure you can design a multi-floor data center. Now this involves volume, that dimension that apparently frightens you.
Since you're going into the ground let's say 10 stories. Now we're at 2.5 zettabytes. With a standard server room calculation and things you can buy off the internet.
Can't make that many drives, you say? In 2012, publically available hard drives were shipped for a revenue 38 billion dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive
If those drives sold were an average of 1 TB sold at an average of 100 bucks, that is 0.38 billion terabytes or 380 exabytes. And amazingly, you don't have to buy them all at once! Just like you don't have to record everyone, immediately. You do what you can and work up over time.
Of course, you are starting to be able to buy 2.5", 2 TB SSD's. That doubles the capacity. Now we're at the Fox number of 5 zettabytes. The near future talks about 10 TB drives. Now you're at 50 zettabytes. It is hard to figure out how they'd get yottabytes in that space -- I think that's a goal for DOD traffic, not actual storage.
In short, if you don't want to be "flamed with name calling" then don't sound like an idiot pretending that this stuff can't be understood. Your basketball analogy STILL makes no sense whatsoever.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)A flashdrive is a computer storage unit. It is a certain physical size and has a certain storage capacity.
Ok so far?
A building is a structure. While it can contain computer storage, it has other things that make it a building such as doors, lights, walls, floors, sprinkler systems, etc.
Ok?
Comparing the physical size of a flash drive to a the physical size of a building is ridiculous.
If you want to compare the storage capacity of a flash drive to the storage capacity of a data center, that makes sense.
The first sentence of the article read: "Given the facilitys scale (they are referring to the physical size of the building) and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a mans pinky (a reference to the physical size of the flashdrive by comparing it to a pinky), the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering."
While the amount of data that could be housed is staggering, the comparison is nonsense. No matter how much you write about volume or try and insult me, I will continue to laugh at the wrongheaded comparison. Maybe a better strategy for you would be to show me a flash drive with a sprinkler system, restrooms for the occupants, and exit signs.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Even if (and I do not accept the assertion) I have reading problems, you are classically innumerate and so I'd rather be me at that point.
You assert that a comparison to the entire building is "unbelievable nonsense"
Then you say that a comparison to the data center inside (3% of that building) "makes sense."
So your full dynamic range for the comparison of numbers is a factor of 30?
That is why I insult you.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)Good luck in life.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Same to you. Hope you don't do your own taxes.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Metadata -- trivial.
Email content -- not impossible, not even particularly hard.
Voice content -- easier than email.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3045764
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)thanks for the link.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)If their budget is actually on 20 million dollars, then the total cost of the disclosed programs AT MOST is 40 million out of an estimated 10-20 billion dollar budget. So we've had an open discussion of national surveillance, at the 0.5% level.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)Is it broken down anywhere? What are we getting for our money?
There's probably better sources on this, but this is from the GAO website--for budget year 2012:
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-695R
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Source here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intelligence_budget
And the NSA budget is estimated at 10+ billion dollars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
Some "expert" (can't remember the reference, too many in the last two weeks) said he wouldn't be surprised if NSA was double, so that's my 20 billion.
Anyway, a tenth of a trillion dollars per year for this! Yay for us!
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)it is structured. So the NSA director is the Cyber Commander.
Reading those links I realize just how much bureaucracy is involved.
"The National Security Agency (NSA) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems,[4] which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography.
The NSA is directed by at least a lieutenant general or Vice Admiral. NSA is a key component of the U.S. Intelligence Community, which is headed by the Director of National Intelligence. The Central Security Service is a co-located agency created to coordinate intelligence activities and co-operation between NSA and other U.S. military cryptanalysis agencies. The Director of the National Security Agency serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and Chief of the Central Security Service."
----------
Wiki had this entry about PRISM:
Data mining
Main article: PRISM (surveillance program)
NSA is reported to use its computing capability to analyze "transactional" data that it regularly acquires from other government agencies, which gather it under their own jurisdictional authorities. As part of this effort, NSA now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions and travel and telephone records, according to current and former intelligence officials interviewed by The Wall Street Journal.[77]
The NSA began the PRISM electronic surveillance and data mining program in 2007.[78][79] PRISM gathers communications data on foreign targets from nine major U.S. internet-based communication service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. Data gathered include email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats such as Skype, and file transfers.[80] Another program, Boundless Informant, employs big data databases, cloud computing technology, and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to analyze data collected worldwide by the NSA, including that gathered by way of the PRISM program.[81][citation needed]
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)You and I have destroyed his thesis that said it was all but impossible, and now what has he got to hold onto to defend the faith?
Pholus
(4,062 posts)giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)I feel like I have slipped into an alternate reality. I actually set up a post that outlined the laws that govern FISA & how we are protected under ECPA bc I got tired og being called an apologist an crap. Not to mention the SCOTUS ruling 30 years ago on phone call logs.
Now the responses are about how laws don't work. It's the same bs argument we hear from the NRA when we argue for laws stricter gun laws.
WTF is going on?
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)Doesn't mean they do not.
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)enough oversight but what I am saying & have provided the docs to substantiate is that the allegations just aren't true. Right now all that is being said is hearsay & nothing more, meanwhile if there is federal laws in place protecting us arguing that our rights are being trampled is nonsense.
Once again it goes back to every other argument, we want stricter gun laws, they say why the criminals are just going to break the law.
What purpose would the gov have for randomly monitoring all of our emails & phone calls, even if they did find something it wouldn't be admissible in court because it's an illegal search under FISA & the ECPA?
FISA is spelled out clear as day.
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)The emails that were the basis of the Zazi case were alternately according to reports, either found by Prism (whatever it was called then) or found by British Intelligence. If found by Prism, they were dropped on the FBI, who then had evidence from an unknown source to start an investigation. So you were saying that they couldn't be used in court? The FBI never said in testimony where the emails came from, but they did say in testimony that the emails were the information they used to start the investigation. The emails were entered into evidence by the way.
So if we're being told the truth, and it was the NSA PRISM program that found the emails, they were in fact used as evidence in a trial. If we're being lied to, which is possible, and PRISM was not the source, which is also possible, then we have an expensive boondoggle that we can better use the funds for in other areas.
The transcript of the case. http://www.scribd.com/doc/146422383/Zaz-i-Hearing
Try page 46
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)the misuse of funds I work with these ppl all day everyday but I can't read it on my phone. I will look at it after my kids baseball game, if I don't get the full answer there I have some different databases I can look through at work to see more on the case law behind it. I
Jarla
(156 posts)to mean that they're allowed to scoop up everything indiscriminately - phone call records, emails, SMS, IM's, etc. - and store it in a large database, but they're only allowed to search for specific data within that database.
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)Most of what Greenwald is saying isn't even consistent with the law at this point.
Anarchy has hit the streets, it's a free for all. It doesn't work that way, not in anyway shape or form.
I'm not saying there aren't some crooked morons out there doing what they want, because you have that anywhere, but it's not the majority.
Jarla
(156 posts)I shouldn't take Ed Snowden at his word without more evidence.
But I'm finding it difficult to figure out what is going on because so much information is classified.
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)While everyone is screaming that the program is TOP Secret in the last few days I have found out how the courts are appointed and aligned, and FISA isn't a classified document, neither is the ECPA. It's a little different for me because I am JAG and have worked in Intell units but the other day I wrote a paper on here just strictly outlining the facts of these programs because there is sooooo much misinformation being spilled. I am 100% an analytical person, and while I know there nothing is 100% I will not just throw our laws out the window & assume they are being violated by everyone.
This was just an info paper I did, you can take it or leave it
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023044289
This is the link you saw on the other page regarding the FISC
https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/
This isn't as big of a secret as everyone was making it seem.
Jarla
(156 posts)And they haven't been very clear about how they're interpreting them.
Based on the report from Barton Gellman, it sounds like they are not currently doing bulk collections, or at least not of email metadata, though they have in the past. But Gellman also says:
The constraints that I operate under are much more remarkable than the powers that I enjoy, said the senior intelligence official who declined to be named.
When asked why the NSA could not release an unclassified copy of its minimization procedures, which are supposed to strip accidentally collected records of their identifying details, the official suggested a reporter submit a freedom-of-information request.
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)It is outlined clearly on who they can gather on, who they can look at, what can be stored & how long. It's all public knowledge, everyone bitches about the MSM being corporate shills & now they are buying the crap hook line & sinker.
Either people educated themselves or they continue to be paranoid & worry about all of the what ifs, but it's not that hard.