General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThey DID illegally record your phone calls and e-mails. Repeat: They DID illegally record them.
And they are stored in a warehouse, probably several.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Do people even think these things through?
sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)only the FISA court knows where the storage space is man.
They also have thousands upon thousands of supercomputers hiding in Yucca mountain (you thought that was for spent nuclear fuel didn't you?) where they are constantly searching your email for funny pictures to caption and post to failblog.
MineralMan
(146,336 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)"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.)"
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)One yottabyte is a little over 1 septillion bytes. How can you picture a yottabyte?
If bytes were seconds:
One megabyte (one million bytes) in seconds would be 11.5 days, one and a half weeks
One gigabyte (one billion bytes) in seconds would be 31.68 years
One terabyte (one trillion bytes) in seconds would be 31,689 years, longer than the time that civilization has existed.
One yottabyte (one septillion bytes) in seconds would be 31,689,000,000,000,000 years, far far far longer in time than the age of the universe (13,770,000,000 years), in fact you could fit in more than 2.3 million universe lifespans into 31.7 quadrillion years.
Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)tammywammy
(26,582 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)if they decided to do that. I'm not exactly sure what they would need this sort of capacity for, other than storing massive amounts of communications.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Would the next iteration be....Giggety?
metalbot
(1,058 posts)It's certainly not impossible using current state technology.
Let's assume we can store a reasonably understandable audio recording at 200KB/min. For nice round numbers, let's assume that your average person spends 500 minutes/month on the phone. We're now at 100MB/person/month. If we assume that there are 200M people in the US who use this, then we're at 20 PB/month to store every phone call in the US.
Global storage capacity is estimated to be 2.7ZB (we'll round down to 2 ZB for nice numbers). Storing the voice recordings of every phone call in the US would represent a usage of .001% of the world's storage capacity per month.
Unlikely? Highly. Illegal? Absolutely.
Impossible? No. Even if I'm off by several orders of magnitude (and I certainly could be), we're still talking about a tiny fraction of the world storage capacity.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That said, redoing the calculation I think you're right; it's in the realm of physical possibility, at least. If they're at 25 kbps (I think in b's not B's because I'm an EE...) like most phone traffic, then it's the same order of magnitude you're talking about. Neat.
longship
(40,416 posts)and earphones transcribing it all. And to back them up, the secret FEMA lumberjack camps for cutting down the forests for pulp wood to make the paper to feed the typewriters. They have nearly all automated between the paper factories and the typewriters, and from the typewriters to the millions of Evelyn Wood speed reading graduate analysts. (And you didn't know she was NSA, did you?)
napoleon_in_rags
(3,991 posts)That's 7.2 MB an hour. That's 138,000 hours of conversation on a consumer grade terrabyte drive.
http://blog.talkatone.com/2011/06/16/talkatone-audio-compression-ftw/
Even if its much less, its not that hard to store a lot.
The best compression though is simply voice to text, storing the conversations in text format. Storing all the conversations in the US is easily doable in this format. Not saying they are, but saying its possible.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)"Penguin bicycle chav zero"
napoleon_in_rags
(3,991 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)npk
(3,660 posts)Yes phone calls are just massive amount of space of a hard disk. Golly gee mama we got a gigabyte of date at Wally Mart. You could probably store a million 5 minute phone calls on a Terabyte of disc storage, no larger than a loaf of bread. They have all these fancy things today to make files smaller.
Whoohhooooo.
Marr
(20,317 posts)But you wouldn't store it as an audio file-- you'd probably want to parse it with voice recognition software and store the content as something searchable.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)"Fusion centers have the potential to dramatically strengthen the nations
law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts. However,
without effective limits on data collection, storage and use,
fusion centers can pose serious risks to civil liberties, including
rights of free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion, racial
and religious equality, privacy and the right to be free from
unnecessary government intrusion."
http://constitutionproject.org/pdf/fusioncenterreport.pdf
Drale
(7,932 posts)HappyMe
(20,277 posts)Oh noes!!11
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Surely you have proof.
zappaman
(20,606 posts)quite possibly the week and maybe even the month!
still_one
(92,435 posts)OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)I could really use some help with peeps who never mastered more than a mutter.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)I know ALL my phone calls are hot to the government. Bill collectors, Repuke brother, an ex in Pa, my "truther" talk. Real juicy stuff there just waiting for some high paid G-Man to hear and decipher it all out.
I'll have to say a special Hello to Obama next time I'm on the phone. Well, what do ya know, my phone is ringing now. I'm coming Obama.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)HappyMe
(20,277 posts)pick up some milk and bread for me in exchange for the marinara sauce recipe that they couldn't quite hear!
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Its like the ultimate baby monitor!
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)Orrex
(63,228 posts)Try and store that shit in a warehouse or several. I dare you!!!!1!!
sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)I've got a good High Def video cam and long lens and I still can't tell your P from your Q.
Orrex
(63,228 posts)And that's the fact that Robert Wuhl made that joke in Tim Burton's execrable Batman.
I do not quote Robert Wuhl. You got lucky this time.
This time.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)It's a bit distracting for those reviewing the satellite images. Thankyou.
Orrex
(63,228 posts)That sounds a lot grosser than I probably meant.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)It's still wrong.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)I can't believe how you were talking to her last night
Zorra
(27,670 posts)am full on committed to living revolution.
asjr
(10,479 posts)raked my brother-in-law over the coals.
MineralMan
(146,336 posts)Your suppositions are evidence of nothing.
rrneck
(17,671 posts)RockaFowler
(7,429 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,324 posts)Zen Democrat
(5,901 posts)MjolnirTime
(1,800 posts)They must get FISA approval to do any mining.
Orrex
(63,228 posts)Fnord!
veganlush
(2,049 posts)statement, easily debunked on common sense alone
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)at least SOMEbody is reading the words of wisdom and erudition that I write on DU.
and my emails?
shoot, I have 3,347 unread emails in my inbox, and another 2,345 unread emails in my deleted folder.
They can store all they want. They won't have time to read them all.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Tommy_Carcetti
(43,212 posts)Guarded by Elvis.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)EC
(12,287 posts)300,000,000 people in U.S. alone...Really?
randome
(34,845 posts)[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]
lpbk2713
(42,769 posts)OMFG