W Post: US gets 126,000,000 intelligence intercepts a day?

[Perry E. Metzger]

[Forwarded on John's behalf...]

To: cryptography at metzdowd.com, gnu at toad.com
Subject: W Post: US gets 126,000,000 intelligence intercepts a day?
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 21:39:36 -0700
From: John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com>

  "The government receives 126 million intelligence intercepts a day."

I've never seen anyone bandy about a number for the total daily volume
of vacuum cleaner 'take' before.  Perhaps the author can point us to a
nice academic paper that breaks out the volumes that come from sigint,
'national technical means' imint, humint, open sources, traffic
analysis, pass-thrus from foreign governments, illegal US domestic
wiretaps, Patriot Act domestic wiretaps, etc?  Volume of faxes
vs. voice phone calls vs. emails vs. other sources?  Even a breakdown
of unencrypted vs. encrypted would be interesting.

The sentence is from a Washington Post op-ed suggesting rejection of
the well analyzed post-TIA "data mining" blue-ribbon panel study.  The
study recommended that the government not be permitted to search
through data about its citizens without a warrant based on individual
suspicion.  The quote is part of her argument that the gov't would be
paralyzed if it had to look at all that data and follow the
Constitution at the same time.  She doesn't follow that argument to
the obvious conclusion that it should perhaps collect less data, but I
digress.

The story is nominally buried behind a cookie/'free registration'
wall, which I don't choose to access because I support REAL web sites,
not consumer-tracking services.  But I found this equivalent 'real'
link to the story, on the author's web site:

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A3521-2004May30

The article is by Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan
Institute, which seems to be in favor of greater economic choice,
individual responsibility, and totalitarianism.  Two out of three
isn't bad, and #1 and #3 suggest that she might have some good
friends in the Bush Administration.  Here's her page and many
writings:

  http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm

Does Ms. Mac Donald know what she's talking about here?

	John

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