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A comment on 'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistleblower. Parent comment

Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by jacquesm on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @07:44AM (#4875987)
They don't need to store the traffic. All they need is to store the endpoints and timestamps and you could compress that quite well to have usable information, such as who talked to who and when.

Your actual data is just a subpoena away anyway in most cases.

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Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by sp332 on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @01:30PM (#4877711)
Exactly, why store all the data in your super-expensive top-secret warehouse, when Facebook and Google will keep it for you for free?

Free == didn't come out of the NSA's budget

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Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by Strshps1MoreTim on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @02:56PM (#4878205)
Money are of no objection to that industry. The combined budget of NSA, CIA, FBI, Pentagon, foreign bases, Afghanistan and Iraq occupation, etc. is in the trillions. Why trust FB or Google if all it costs to capture and store the information are money.
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Re:'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistle... by philwelch on Wednesday December 05, 2012 @05:45PM (#4879052)
NSA is an intelligence agency, not a law enforcement agency. They don't operate within the court process. Which means they don't really do subpoenas or warrants. Furthermore, any data covertly collected by the NSA would be inadmissible in court anyway, which would make it impossible to get a subpoena or warrant based on it anyway.
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