http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=ht...
It is however worth mentioning that we have this CIOT system which is a publicly known and automated system that actually provides automated access to name and address details of any given Dutch IP address. The system is updated with ISPs' data every morning and can be queried at will. ISPs, even the most privacy-aware one (XS4ALL) do not give statistics of how often their part of the database was queried (I asked them), but it has been made public that the database had a total of 2.6 million queries over 2010 and 2.9 in 2009. That's one in six citizens' data queried for no apparent reason.
Tech details: The CIOT system is a centralized search dispatcher, that queries systems provided by individual ISPs. A government official can enter an IP there and within seconds all ISPs have been queried and one probably returns a match.
Yes, because secret services have been known to strictly follow the law, and not do anything without telling you first.
http://ripe58.ripe.net/content/presentations/ciot.pdf
it says 250k queries per month... kinda hard to get warrants for all of them i guess
A lot of people underestimate the amount of storage it would take to store all voice data.
http://www.telegeography.com/press/press-releases/2012/01/09... says there were 438 billion international (because that's all the NSA collects, right?) calling minutes in 2011 (in the world... not just the Netherlands).
Aberdeen will sell you 1 PB of storage for $495k: http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/petarack.htm
A narrowband speech codec will encode calls in excellent quality (for the PSTN) at 12 kbps.
So that's 438 * 10^9 minutes * 60 seconds/minute * 12000 bits/second / (8 bits/byte * 10^15 bytes/petabyte) (using lying harddrive manufacturer's definitions of a petabyte) = 39.42 PB.
Or less than $20mln/year. Which of course is the quoted budget of PRISM.
I'm actually curious how much text data this would be per day; number of call minutes * average number of words per minute. I'd be surprised if that wouldn't fit in a reasonable cluster.
They do have a lot of eavesdrop approvals though, or so I heard from a colleague. (But that still doesn't mean they capture all the calls.)
Anyhow, why does it matter that much. If you have something to hide, then I'd be sweating. If not, who really gives a sh*te if people are tapping into our digital lives.
Facebook, Google and rest are just as bad as the governments. They are invading us with advertisements in all parts of our digital life.
If people are worried about it, turn your crap off.
Because your "something to hide" may be something that is currently legal / acceptable / non-embarrassing / etc., but becomes illegal / unacceptable / embarrassing / threatening to those in power / etc. in the future. And because governments have been known to collect data, nominally for legal reasons, and use it for political purposes, to threaten, harass and intimidate people based on their political affiliation.
All of that said, it really comes down to the principle of the thing. I've said - and will continue to say - plenty of things that could endanger me in some hypothetical future. I actually tend to be very public with most of my thoughts, rants, ramblings, and what-not, as I have an attitude of "If you don't like what I say, fuck you" directed at the government and pretty much everybody else. I have almost nothing to hide. BUT... not everybody has that attitude, and some people care more about keeping their "stuff" private. And even I want the option of keeping certain things private when the need arises. Just because I'm, say, 99% transparent (whatever that means) doesn't lessen the importance of that "1% secret". And that's the rub... everybody probably has at least "1%" of things that they do want to keep private/secret, now or in the future. And they should have the option to do that if they want.
