bush* on "Democracy Now" this morning

[rwork]

Trying to explain his policy on spying on Americans. He said we are only listening to a few calls from out of the country. You know from Al Queda and their "Affiliates." What an embarrassment.

[soothsayer]

1. yeah, luckily Al Q. only calls from the same numbers all the time.

Maybe from home. Or a convenient payphone. Yeesh. Whatta ultramaroon.

[babylonsister]

2. "We're at war, with a bunch of cold-blooded killers."

Our of dimson's own mouth. But I wonder who really are the cold-blooded killers?

[Missy M]

3. Does it come up 'Al Queda' on caller ID???

[peekaloo]

4. I think they only call collect.

}(

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. Wait. I'm confused

you are telling me Bush is on the show Democracy Now? The Amy Goodman show? WTF?

[babylonsister]

6. No, it was just a clip of him, TG. That would be the day! nt

[TallahasseeGrannie]

10. Thank God

my world was spinning. I doubt Amy Goodman would be able for form a coherent sentence, she'd be so angry.

[Moochy]

7. Clinton was on Democracy Now in 2000

Back in 2000. :) Amy Goodman took the opportunity to try and interview him when he was giving a rah rah get out the vote speech for Gore. He gave really thoughtful answers and spent more time than he was planning talking to her.

[hang a left]

8. They are only listening to a few calls from out of the country

the rest are "in country".

[hang a left]

9. Seriously though...

Check out this post from yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2345802

60 Terabytes: thats what the gov wanted to store digital conversations


Edited on Mon Jan-02-06 08:32 PM by caligirl

6 Million conversations per month!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/18/52011/042

I can't believe I missed this if it was cross posted here.


INSIDER INFO: 6 million wiretapped conversations per month? Facts from IBM
by harrier
Sun Dec 18, 2005 at 03:20:11 AM PDT

In a quirk of fate, I met someone from IBM who was directly involved in implementing the wiretapping system that is all over the news. It is much worse than the news would suggest.

As some have reported, this is definitely not just NSA. The bidding for the technology to do this project was conducted by members of the FBI and the CIA. During the proposal process, IBM was told explicitly that they were to answer questions, not ask them.

One of the most noteworthy comments was that the Government had specified 60 Terabytes of monthly storage for digital versions of conversations. MONTHLY!

more below...

* harrier's diary :: ::
*

At about 11k per call, that is about 6 million conversations per month. (correct my math if you are better at computers!).

This is enormous.

People in the press are concerned that they are tapping the phones of people without just cause. What they are really doing is much, much worse.

1. In reality, they are tapping hundreds of thousands of lines all the time. This is KGB stuff.
2. Every call is stored digitally and indexed accurately, creating an archive that can be used for political purposes in the future. This is not reels of tape that would require massive effort to file through and might become useless quickly. It is highly indexed information that is being kept in storage. Two years from now, they could look into particular phone numbers to check in on cell and land lines.
3. It is cell and land lines
4. They are running filters on every conversation for Farsi and other languages in real time

This is domestic spying on a massive scale, not just a few wiretaps without a judge. This should be cause for impeachment.


edit: a comment later restates the sheer numbers of calls possibly tapped:
Speech is a few kilohertz wide, so something like 10K per second, so 6 billion seconds, 100 million minutes, of call. At 10 minutes per call, this is 10 million calls a month.