Reply #9: Anyone know how many overseas calls are made every day? [View All]

[HereSince1628]

From the US to everywhere else in the world must be in the tens of millions per day. They are gonna be in scores of languages and dialects, and a large number of them are going to be encrypted. Although the NSA is potentially interested in every phone call, the capacity to have a human sit and listen to each is gonna be too limited to keep up with that volume don't you think? Because of that international voice communications are probably gonna be more regularly screened for who is being connected to whom rather than for content.

The content analysis which is gonna be much more resource intensive is likely to be focused on calls that belong to networks that look interesting for any of various reasons. Establishing links between phones that form "networks" of callers inside the telephone system isn't that tough to do with automation.

In other words I sort of doubt NSA is gonna have a paid human listener catching every mention of "what I'm gonna do to your XXXXX with my XXXXX when I see you again" although it isn't difficult to imagine some techy pervert doing that once in a while.