Who is listening to all this chatter ? a team of 2000 phone tappers?
Are they honing in on specific phones or gathering a bunch from a specific region?
There must be a zillion calls being made every day worldwide, so who or what are they focusing on to make these statements?
“Chatter” does not refer to phone calls per se. My WAG is that it includes not only direct phone conversation taps, but network loads (phone, internet, email, financial) across know connection ‘choke’ points, monitoring web sites (gossip does have its good points for finding out things), observing airline ticket purchases, informants (not very likely), etc.
You can do this yourself. Go to a busy place like a shopping mall, sit down and allow your mind to wander. In time, the various sights and sounds will appear to die down and you can concentrate on the “abnormal” things.
This worked very well when I was overseas and just sat down in an outdoor mall in an area known for drug deals. In no time it was easy to spot the deals taking place, over and over again, in broad daylight in a very busy and public place. The “chatter” was the reoccurring movements of a number of select people who never quite left the area but hung around, while shoppers and office workers moved through.
The point is, sometimes its easier to look for the everyday things, eliminate them and what is left is the abnormal “chatter.”
Chatter refers especially to encrypted communications. They are tapped but not decoded but the fact that they increase and other traffic analysis tells you something’s cooking.
The NSA is supposedly doing most of the listening. Apparently they have 3 or 4 rooms the size of football fields filled with Cray supercomputers that catch and catagorize all of the info.
Of course, if you ask the NSA about any of this they will say, "NSA? What’s that? Look, a duck!!! (pointing behind you) Then when you turn around to look, they will run off, ala Homer Simpson.
The NSA’s system is called “Echelon,” apparently. Or perhaps I should say “supposedly,” as I don’t know if it’s been officially “declassified” yet, or if it even really exists.
Even the NSA’s own charter is still classified.
Read “The Puzzle Palace” for an excellent history of this most secretive of agencies.
Cite, please? Is it from The Puzzle Palace?
Well, there are signs on I-95 directing you to NSA so it’s not that secret any more but it used to be said NSA stood for “No Such Agency” because its very existence was denied.
The charter’s not terribly difficult to find. Presidential Memorandum: NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY