The Wildly Misleading PR Claim re: NSA Spying: "We only monitor 1.6 percent of web traffic."

[woo me with science]

Last edited Sat Aug 10, 2013, 06:04 AM - Edit history (8)

Even if we believe the figure, the number is clearly intended to mislead the public, and wildly so.

It's misleading because it's intended to give the impression to the casual listener (and we have *already* seen this claim made here by the usual defenders of the surveillance state) that 98 percent of us therefore don't need to worry about being spied on, or that "only" one to two percent of our personal information is being collected.

But the game here is that they are talking about ALL INTERNET TRAFFIC, of which our personal activities are just a very tiny percentage to begin with.

Just a cursory search online turns up the following articles:

Non-Humans Account for 51% of All Internet Traffic
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/03/non-humans-account-51-all-interent-traffic/49967/

Half of Internet Traffic in North America Is Netflix and YouTube Streaming
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/05/netflix-youtube-traffic/65210/

You see the point. The vast majority of "traffic" on the internet is bots, advertising, spam, the programmed stuff that computers do automatically....and bandwidth-intensive streaming of Netflix and Youtube videos and TV shows and music. Add to that the percentage that is probably porn. Or people playing video games online for hours and hours and hours. The vast majority of traffic on the internet isn't what the NSA is looking to collect.

The stuff that interests the NSA.....the information it has set out deliberately to collect...is the personal information about each and every one of us: where we go online, what we type and what information we seek, the associations we have, email communications and contacts, board postings, chats, what we do and when we do it. And that stuff is apparently a *very* tiny, miniscule fraction of "all web traffic."

We are dealing with some very slick PR here.

They are collecting everything they can about you and everything you do. Count on it.

[ProSense]

1. "Even if we believe the figure, the number is clearly intended to soothe and mislead the public."

It's a lie!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023437904

Well, it has to be because everything the government releases is a lie.

[Pholus]

11. Considering the track record on this issue...

Ummm. Yes.

When the very definition of "collect" is misleading, the number is also defined carefully.

[LondonReign2]

17. Deflect deflect deflect

Keep up the good work.

[YoungDemCA]

19. Indeed

Lots of slick PR around here.

[GoneFishin]

2. Well, not everything. But this is clearly a deliberate distortion.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Good point.

I never really thought about how much of internet traffic consisted of bots doing advertising. All they would really need is a program that searches for particular words and phrases, and of course they would have to monitor certain users on a list. They would only need a very small amount of the total content to grab everything that would be of any possible use to them.

[Igel]

23. I saw what you did there. Very clever.

Agreeing with the OP before planting the little bit of information which, when elaborated, destroys the post.

You point out that all they'd need is a program that searches for particular words and phrases. You didn't bother to say what that program searched.

If the program only searches the first 10 characters in every group of 1000, that would be a really ineffective program. If it's after "bomb" those first ten characters might include "bomb"--score!--or start with "mb" or end with "bo". Or might even start with "Here are my instructions for the nuclear bomb we decided to drop on Tallahassee", in which case the program would only pick up "Here are m". Not very useful.

The only way the program could reasonably work is to search what?

All the Internet traffic.

But then it's not monitoring 1.8%, it's monitoring 100%.

And that wipes out any claim that it's a generic search over whole classes of users so they're only counting part of the results. Unless you search the packets for all the streaming video you don't know what's in them. You can search for users, IIRC, just by looking at the headers. But if Muhammed Robertovich bar Yue was watching Netflix, they'd need to check to see what's in there.

[blkmusclmachine]

4. More like 160 percent.

"Trust us. We wouldn't lie to you,

again."

[noise]

5. It's like one of the Fox news

talking points given to all the news shows.

"Snowden advocates are full of it! The NSA only monitors 1.6% of Internet traffic! Arrest him!"

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. Wonder if they've been doing it since this guy...

[JDPriestly]

7. Absolutely correct. They collect everything on us.

[joshcryer]

8. North America makes up about 15% of all internet traffic.

It's easier to just note how much they're scraping daily and then compare it to the internet population.

1.6% of 1,826 petabytes is 29.2 petabytes. 0.025% of 29.2 is 450 terabytes.

39% of the world is online. 39% of 7.1 billion people is 2.7 billion people.

450 trillion (bytes) / 2.7 billion (people) = 160 kilobytes, for every man, woman, and child on the internet. Every day. That's around 60 MB of data collected per person per year.

[Pholus]

12. Consistent with email and web form posting....

[joshcryer]

14. Indeed.

They have basically admitted to spying on the world.

[morningfog]

15. That was my thought when I saw 1.6%. That is an incredible amount

considering the total volume. You broke it down well.

[Pholus]

16. I am really getting sick of spook-speak though.

Everything needs three levels of parsing to separate the truth from the lies....

[woo me with science]

21. Thank you, Josh.

That was a helpful post up there.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. And we're not spying on Americans! ...except when we help the DEA target drug users.

[woo me with science]

22. +1 And who knows who else. nt

[IncessantPerfidy]

10. If one remembers and I do have a very good memory a number of years ago

the Government publically said that the Evil Dewers were communicating via porn and they had arrested the usual brown skinned suspects, in that they hide micro messages in porn pics and videos basically a high tech dead drop. Heck DU could even be used as a communication medium by the Evil Dewers and no one would even know. Oh yeah most likely the FBI and NSA post here too for all we know DU could be a total Gov front Operation and you will never know.

If one wants to keep something private do not put it on the internet or any other form of electronic or voice communication, everyone is looking, watching and listening.

[Pholus]

13. I always presumed the professional bad guys knew that.

The rubes (us) on the other hand will make a few mistakes. Always figured this is more about control than terra.

[YoungDemCA]

20. It's always about control

Intimidation of the populace, keep us scared...

[Wilms]

18. ^