I can't get excited or depressed about these numbers, because at this order of magnitude and with as little as we know about the workflows and storage mechanisms involved, there is no meaningful difference between 0.000004% and 0.00004%, or indeed 4%, considering how vague the definitions are of whether something is being inspected, whether it can be or is stored, etc.
That said, the more data (numbers, policies, or what have you) the better. Get it all out there, fact-check the hell out of it. If you want to do a puzzle, first you have to pour out the pieces.
The problem as I see it is that no matter how much they store. If they so wish they can search for you!
The potential for abuse is just to high.
Originally I was so what some random stranger at some big department might have some info on me.
A friend said to me once "think of your worst enemy, whoever that may be, if they had every piece of communication you ever sent on the internet or if they had list of every website you ever went to, would you be worried?"
That clarified things for me. Not that I have enemies in that respect (at least I hope not) but if I did would I want them to have access to this information.
We do not know who has access to this info and business leaders (especially in countries other than the US) are having their conversations monitored and that info is apparently being passed to business leaders in the US.
Fundamentally, this is what the social contract is about. The individual has a right to fight the state if the state no longer protects his life, liberty, or property. Clearly, the state is actively pursuing Snowden's liberty if not his life. And there's little chance it would protect Greenwald's liberty.
Thus, for the whistleblower, the state is their worst enemy.
And any of us may find the state has become, in the blink of an eye, our worst enemy. Especially anyone who operates a server.
I really hope that someone in Hollywood (or a Fiction author) sees the potential here. What would an anti-Snowden have done in his place? Monitor his girlfriend? Dig up dirt on a romantic rival? Blackmail a senator?
Or for that matter, now that politicians know this power is out there, how about a Senator finding an anti-Snowden to get dirt on a political rival?
You basically take "The Lives of Others" and have a modern-day script with a few search-and-replaces.
Yes. A thousand times yes. Forget Minority Report. Build up an entire script based solely on the facts of what we already know the NSA's systems are capable of right now.
The script should try to weave in every abuse scenario that is practically possible: Digging up for personal vendettas and blackmail. Insider trading. Manipulating politics or the economy in other countries. Manipulating politics or the economy in our own country. Sock puppeting. etc.
Design the script to play to the fears of every politically influential group.
There are more than enough facts out there now to weave a very plausible story that looks like a prequel to 1984.
Guardian journalist Charlie Booker is the showrunner of a series called Black Mirror on Channel 4 in Britain where each episode is centered around exploring the potential impact of technology in the near future.
There are some scripts written up for a third series and the NSA revelations would be perfect to explore in a show like that. The problem, as is the general case with this issue, that far too few people are actively engaging it. Black Mirror drew around 1.6m viewers at its highest point, but this was admittedly only in the UK and there was no hot button issue being explored.
Who cares what percentage of the total internet traffic is monitored? This is a totally disingenuous metric to put forward. Most of the traffic on the internet is not meant to be private. Most of the traffic probably even isn't created by humans.
Interesting metrics to debate:
What percentage of American emails are recorded by the NSA? 0.0004% or 100%?
What percentage of American phone calls are recorded by the NSA? 0.0004% or 100%?
What percentage of American text messages are recorded by the NSA? 0.0004% or 100%?
If you ignore various entertainment traffic (HD video etc) - which is the biggest component of the multi-petabyte "information exchanged on the Internet" - one could be monitoring/capturing 100% of the information that matters (emails and social media postings), and still technically be within that fraction of a percentage point.
Exactly. I have a little bandwidth counter in my rainmeter and it tells me that so far this month I've used about 50 gigs download and 20 gigs upload. So incredibly little of that is content that is sensitive or really even meaningful. If I send one email to a terrorist, then download one movie, then only like a couple kilobytes out of several gigs is actually "interesting" data.
That said, the more data (numbers, policies, or what have you) the better. Get it all out there, fact-check the hell out of it. If you want to do a puzzle, first you have to pour out the pieces.