[Forwarded on John's behalf...] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: W Post: US gets 126,000,000 intelligence intercepts a day? Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 21:39:36 -0700 From: John Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"The government receives 126 million intelligence intercepts a day." I've never seen anyone bandy about a number for the total daily volume of vacuum cleaner 'take' before. Perhaps the author can point us to a nice academic paper that breaks out the volumes that come from sigint, 'national technical means' imint, humint, open sources, traffic analysis, pass-thrus from foreign governments, illegal US domestic wiretaps, Patriot Act domestic wiretaps, etc? Volume of faxes vs. voice phone calls vs. emails vs. other sources? Even a breakdown of unencrypted vs. encrypted would be interesting. The sentence is from a Washington Post op-ed suggesting rejection of the well analyzed post-TIA "data mining" blue-ribbon panel study. The study recommended that the government not be permitted to search through data about its citizens without a warrant based on individual suspicion. The quote is part of her argument that the gov't would be paralyzed if it had to look at all that data and follow the Constitution at the same time. She doesn't follow that argument to the obvious conclusion that it should perhaps collect less data, but I digress. The story is nominally buried behind a cookie/'free registration' wall, which I don't choose to access because I support REAL web sites, not consumer-tracking services. But I found this equivalent 'real' link to the story, on the author's web site: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A3521-2004May30 The article is by Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which seems to be in favor of greater economic choice, individual responsibility, and totalitarianism. Two out of three isn't bad, and #1 and #3 suggest that she might have some good friends in the Bush Administration. Here's her page and many writings: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm Does Ms. Mac Donald know what she's talking about here? John --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]