Thread: NSA Phone Record Database - a Teachable Moment?

Waiting to see how it plays out is what I am doing. According to a USAToday article, NSA was mostly collecting the records of who called who and when, but not the conversations themselves. The courts will probably stand against the administration, if I were a betting man.

I believe it is more of a teaching opportunity for Social Studies, Civics, and Government. I am dissappointed that it took place so late in the year or I would have used it extensively in my Government classes. As it is a few students did touch on it this morning and I am sure we will have some "current event" discussion on Monday on the subject.

Most days, I am not sure my 9th graders have a clue what a government is- fortunately, in this state they get Civics and Economics in the 10th grade. In fact, I think NSA would have to be made into an Executive department with 1000s of GS-12s just to keep track of all their text messages. (Wat R U Doin? Nothin. Chilin in history, its so boring. I hate Mr. JohnBoy, he sux.) Come to think of it, NSA can have all these messages....in fact, if we forced them to make transcripts of all of them and read them, they would probably stop altogether.

I fear what we are hearing has something in common with just about everything we are hearing today in the Government cesspool.
About 40 years ago, I served on a Governors Campaign Committee and was told that the first duty of a candidate was - GET ELECTED! That mentality has, I fear, become malignant.
A fellow I heard from the AT&T Executive Office said, "According to our records, an average of about 400,000,000 people make 6 calls per day and talk a little over 2 hours. In order to 'monitor' 10% of them would take 40,000,000 people on line which we doubt the government has 'in the basement'. To have a computer monitor them to scan for key words would requite a computer with 400,000,000 inputs. Our computers that handle the dialing only use an input connection for 30 seconds to allow you to dial and then that one is passed to the next call. If everyone in the country picked up his phone at once, the system would jamb. One 2 hour conversation, if recorded for future scanning would create a file large enough that, to keep all of them for 1 day would require hard drive space that does not exist if all the computers on the earth were linked. While a few 'suspects' can be monitored, the idea of attempting to do that to the entire system is not possible."
Well, another good political move shot down .... Do the math he suggested and you will be handling some really large numbers...

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Tom,

I was wondering about those figures from the ATT exec. The present US pop <300,000,000, so I am confused. Did the conversation you overhear contain any other info that would shed light light on the 400mill figure.

It is probably because so many people have more than one phone and the AT&T info would be persons using a phone without knowing if it is the same person on different phones.
I think the data was based on 400,000,000 calls on that many phones as their equipment would not know if one used the phone at home and then one at work. It would still be that many calls.....
That is the way I read it ............

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Thanks Tom. I figured there was something I missed.

For one I am not concerned with my telephone calls being monitored. If an NSA Agent finds my speaking to parents about their children's behavior or my conversation about what to purchase at Wal-mart on the way home informative, hey more power to them.

As for the numbers, I believe the 400 Million calls would be number of individual phone numbers. Recent stats show that the average family of four have eleven telephone numbers. I personally have six telephone numbers: Home, work, cell, home fax, blackberry, and Pager - which does not count the mutiple lines at work.

Well, I am in the minority then. I have a work number, a home number, and an On-Star number that I have no clue what the number actually is.

On topic

I find this to be one more piece of evidence in the paranoia that infects the current administration.