Top Secret America

[Peter Lemkin]

This truly is nearly beyond comprehension. Who actually listens to all these calls, reads therse email I wonder. Obviously people who have taken an oath of silence. There needs to be a damn revolution in this country. And not the tea party type. Serious protectors of the Constitution.

Some "change" !

Dawn

Dawn, from what I understand of it [nota bene: my NSA certificates of completion of curriculum have been misplaced by the US Postal System], no person actually listens to all the calls or reads all the e-mails. Basically, if I am correct, in layman's terms, a huge high-volume vacuuum cleaner hose is attached to central processing points [the Echelon listening posts, the Verizon switching rooms, the ISP intra-nodal way points for Internet communciations etc.] and sucks out all the data. [Think of it as single stream recycling.] From there, filters [key-word algorithms, transmission and recipient indicators as highlighted, etc.] sort thropugh the stuff. Everything is filtered, but only a very very small amount of it gets "flagged" as a metter of interest. Lots of it gets logged so it can be re-retrieved in case a "person of interest" is found with exploded underwear. Only the very small percentage is diverted for further follow-up, again using filters with finer screening systems. At some point after at least three layers of screening, an actual human might be tasked to read or listen; then they have to check with their superiors. The whole thing is run with acres and acres of Cray super-computer "ganged" together in serial fashion, as well as those split off for different functionality.

As I understand it, correct Ed, except many more layers than three. It was some years ago now, but I interviewed someone who worked there and tested/monitored the systems. 99.99% get stored forever and never used - but are accessible as needed/wanted. Some little amount gets sent to more high priority databases and a very little gets sent for humans or special computers to render into text or to analyze. The amount of data is now one Zettabyte of data - an almost incomprehensible amount of information....including your wishing your grandmother happy birthday last year.....and all of your emails, bank details, driving record...et al. ad nauseum.

A zettabyte (symbol ZB, derived from the SI prefix zetta-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one sextillion bytes.
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = or 10 to the 21st power. hakehands:

Hmmm....wonder how much a one ZB harddrive costs these days?......