# Claim: the NSA records and stores 80% of U.S. phone calls **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 12, 2014, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912 "2014-07-12T03:31:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/81 "2014-07-18T16:43:52Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Is it even possible that the NSA could LISTEN to all that? How many employees do they have, anyway? A trillion? No, they could not listen to all that, but that’s beside the point. They want to be able to go back and listen to the bits that they _are_ interested in. What they are doing, apparently, is NOT filtering the calls of everyone hoping to hear them planning an attack - what they are doing is storing all the data so that if the CIA agent says “this guy’s a terrorist suspect - I sure wish we could go back and listen to his phone calls for the last three months,” the NSA guy will say “get me a warrant and you can.” That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/82 "2014-07-18T17:09:56Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > In what way does it sound even remotely made up? Given previous scandals like LOVEINT, this sounds eminently plausible. You wouldn’t be trying to discredit the idea that voyeurs within the NSA are passing around nude photos of women that they’ve intercepted because it demonstrates a gaping weakness in your position on both the NSA and encryption, would you? > . What gaping hole would that be? Corruption and abuse exists in every industry and every workplace. That some government employees might possibly have abused their power in a way that harms noone anyway no more impugns the entire program than a couple of asshole cops means speed limits should be done away with. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/83 "2014-07-18T18:57:39Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I’m saying that this sounds exactly like the sort of thing I’d make up if I’d run out of legit information to sell to the press and I needed to come up with something to get them to pay attention to me again. Speaking of making up stuff when you run out of legit information, Snowden hasn’t made a dime off the information he’s passed to the press. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/84 "2014-07-18T19:42:49Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > That some government employees might possibly have abused their power in a way that harms noone anyway Stalking “harms no one”? Please Please PLEASE tell us that you’re actually a Republican Senate candidate. This could be the moment of the election cycle we’ve all been Akin for… ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/85 "2014-07-18T19:58:33Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Stalking “harms no one”? Who said anything about stalking? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/86 "2014-07-19T01:59:01Z")
Interesting that people are wound up about this. I don’t want the government reading my e-mail or listening to my phone calls, but I don’t care if they are recording _everyone’s_ phone calls. There just aren’t enough people to listen to more than an insubstantial fraction of them. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/87 "2014-07-19T12:09:07Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Interesting that people are wound up about this. I don’t want the government reading my e-mail or listening to my phone calls, but I don’t care if they are recording _everyone’s_ phone calls. There just aren’t enough people to listen to more than an insubstantial fraction of them. Exactly. When you start tracking EVERYTHING, every little piece of information just turns into meaningless noise. I’d also guess that it makes it harder to find the bad guys too because that weird pattern you might notice with Joe Terrorist also matches Jane Normal-Person, Peter Nut-Job, and Marsha Local-Eccentric. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Cashless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Johnny\_Cashless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Cashless)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/88 "2014-07-19T14:05:15Z")
^^^ In case it gets lost, the point, the principle - the basic human right - is to privacy. There is, of course, a caveat: except when in the national interest - meaning in very specific cases for which a court order is required, from an independent judiciary. What the US gov does is totally weird shit, way beyond anything of which the STASI could have dreamed. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/89 "2014-07-19T15:32:08Z")
Sure, but only because the STASI didn’t have the technology. Anyway, the point remains: spying on everyone without a warrant is \*less \*of a threat to freedom than just spying on some. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Cashless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Johnny\_Cashless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Cashless)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/90 "2014-07-19T15:34:49Z")
Just get a warrant, dude. It’s not goona kill you, but it’s killing my human rights. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/91 "2014-07-19T15:42:56Z")
I am speaking relatively, not saying I’m in favor of this policy. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/92 "2014-07-19T16:05:23Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > But the claim isn’t that the Internet Archive’s mode of operation is the same as what the intelligence agencies are doing. The claim is that, contrary to what one may expect, and based on some reasonable assumptions, the storage capacity needed to physically record every phone call in the world is not as outrageously outlandish in cost or storage space as one may expect, and well within the capabilities of the NSA and GCHQ, given what we know of the data centres these agencies are building and currently operating. > > The Internet Archive is only mentioned to bolster the credibility of the guy making the claim: he is running a massive operation that needs to store large amounts of data. He can reasonably be called an expert on how much data storage at the scale we are talking about actually costs. Did you read the exchange? Who said storage cost was _the_ limiting factor. I specifically mentioned building out the infrastructure, and yes–the data warehouse is part of that. You guys understand that data warehousing is different than just buying a bunch of hard drives, right? There are real technological engineering concerns the larger your data warehouse gets. Not just the physical storage concerns which have their own space/electricity/cooling/cost aspect, but when you’re storing say, every customer transaction that’s ever happened on [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) how do you setup it up so Amazon can use that information do do meaningful reporting? If you actually read into what Amazon actually doesn’t, it’s not comparable in my mind to the Internet archive. The Internet archive is “dumb” storage, you look up what you want by knowing its URL, it’s a simple key/value relationship. Amazon (just one example) instead needs to be able to perform far more meaningful analytic functions on its data and how you engineer your data infrastructure will genuine affect how well you can do that, or in some cases whether it can be done at all. And everything Amazon stores has clear, easy to handle information in terms of structuring it so it can be analyzed later. It’s all created by text type input, someone is buying a product, at a certain price, at a certain time, shipped to a certain area. Extant database technology makes all of that very easy to store. But when you’re talking about audio you’re now talking about automated speech recognition on an entire Amazon or far larger scale data store to make that information useful. Obviously though, maybe the NSA system is dumb, and it’s just an archive. But if it’s just an archive the value of it relative to the expense is probably going to be a worse cost/return outcome, because you’re spending 99.9999% of your resources storing and collecting audio that is 100% of no value whatsoever. It’s like building and launching a Saturn V rocket with no astronauts on it to fake a moon landing, that rocket was most of the cost of each launch. And again, the data collection, until I know for sure, is a valid concern. There are utility systems that measure in real time electricity or natural gas flow rates through large portions (but not all) of the natural gas or electricity infrastructure (“SCADA” systems.) The databases that store all of these ticks of data is massive, but that complexity in those systems is not the storage, it’s in the infrastructure involved in managing all of those collection points and physically keeping them all working. If the phone system is comparable at all, then the storage is far less of a concern than the collection. Further, even if the NSA was doing what I said they may be doing, creating a “dumb” archive of audio files and hoping the metadata will be meaningful enough that they can make use of 1 out of every 200 million calls stored some day, the complexity of that system isn’t tied to the cost of the storage medium. The storage costs are probably going to be less than the engineering costs associated with getting the system up and running and the many actual computers (be they specialized data warehouse type servers or etc) that are used to manage the storage. Literally all that has been said in response to questions on the technological feasibility of this are “well, this guy shows that the data storage size would be manageable.” Okay, so that’s one small piece of the entire system, and obviously if the required storage was out of scale with reality (like say, it required storing more information than could be stored on all available disk storage on the planet) that would be an immediate nonstarter. But just because you can physically build out enough storage really says nothing about the other serious concerns about how this system would work to any degree. The storage concerns of the PPACA for example were certainly an important aspect of the system design, but one they probably solved pretty quickly with a standard data warehouse type approach. But the complex systems integration on the other hand, was not so easy, and just throwing money and man hours at it didn’t fix those problems in a timely fashion. In fact with complex software problems you often cannot just throw money and man hours at them and get a fix. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/93 "2014-07-19T16:45:46Z")
> [@Johnny\_Cashless](#): > > ^^^ In case it gets lost, the point, the principle - the basic human right - is to privacy. Just so we’re clear, there _is_ no explicit “right to privacy” written in the Constitution. Naturally, there should be one. But people who claim certain rights first need to make sure those rights actually exist. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Cashless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Johnny\_Cashless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Cashless)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/94 "2014-07-19T17:00:38Z")
Ah yes, US exceptionalism. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2014, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912/95 "2014-07-22T14:05:20Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > If you actually read into what Amazon actually doesn’t, it’s not comparable in my mind to the Internet archive. The Internet archive is “dumb” storage, you look up what you want by knowing its URL, it’s a simple key/value relationship. Amazon (just one example) instead needs to be able to perform far more meaningful analytic functions on its data and how you engineer your data infrastructure will genuine affect how well you can do that, or in some cases whether it can be done at all. This makes the situation even more alarming, by highlighting the fact that illegitimate uses of the stored data (“Here’s a list of phone numbers and e-mail addresses for this guy who’s being a PITA to one of my big contributors. Give me what you got on him.”) are fairly easy while the publicly professes functions (“Is somebody out there planning to blow something up?”) are difficult if not outright impossible. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/claim-the-nsa-records-and-stores-80-of-u-s-phone-calls/692912.md?page=4)