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"The order was signed to help authorities track 26 individuals" "The federal wiretap resulted in the interception of 3,292,385 cell phone conversations or mess

by oblib 9y ago

"The order was signed to help authorities track 26 individuals" "The federal wiretap resulted in the interception of 3,292,385 cell phone conversations or messages over 60 days" 3,292,385 / 26 / 60 = 2110.5 calls/messages per person per day. That wasn't really explained in the article but I'd be interested in knowing how that could happen.

rosser 9y ago
From the Fine Article: > It's understood to be the largest number of calls intercepted by a single wiretap in years, though it's not known the exact number of Americans whose communications were caught up by the order.
luhn 9y ago
It wasn't 26 people being surveilled, it was many people (hundreds or thousands) being surveilled in an attempt to track the 26 individuals.
- mjevans 9y ago
  It sounds like they stingrayed or otherwise captured an entire node (on some system / a few systems covering a specific area) and then attempted to sieve out what they were actually looking for... instead of actually going after a surgically targeted filter. Even in the Jason Borne movies they didn't slurp up this much data!
  - oogali 9y ago
    The directors and script writers weren't nearly imaginative enough (or clued in?) to dream up the surveillance infrastructure the US has been deploying and iterating on for decades.
readams 9y ago
I suppose its possible that there were messages being generated by an automated agent and this is a nonstory. Would be nice to know the real details.
jaclaz 9y ago
Maybe? Only first day: A (suspect) calls B. B (becomes a suspect)calls C and D. C (becomes a suspect)calls E and F. D (becomes a suspect)calls G and H. ... It is easy to quickly grow in number of wiretapped devices with a similar scheme, even after some deduplication, even "wrong numbers" will have become (temporarily) suspects and thus intercepted. What is impressive is the direct ratio of 26/3,292,385, which is more or less 1/126,630, I guess we could call it the "needle in the haystack" approach.

by oblib 9y ago

rosser 9y ago

From the Fine Article: > It's understood to be the largest number of calls intercepted by a single wiretap in years, though it's not known the exact number of Americans whose communications were caught up by the order.

luhn 9y ago

It wasn't 26 people being surveilled, it was many people (hundreds or thousands) being surveilled in an attempt to track the 26 individuals.

mjevans 9y ago
It sounds like they stingrayed or otherwise captured an entire node (on some system / a few systems covering a specific area) and then attempted to sieve out what they were actually looking for... instead of actually going after a surgically targeted filter. Even in the Jason Borne movies they didn't slurp up this much data!
- oogali 9y ago
  The directors and script writers weren't nearly imaginative enough (or clued in?) to dream up the surveillance infrastructure the US has been deploying and iterating on for decades.

readams 9y ago

I suppose its possible that there were messages being generated by an automated agent and this is a nonstory. Would be nice to know the real details.

jaclaz 9y ago

Maybe? Only first day: A (suspect) calls B. B (becomes a suspect)calls C and D. C (becomes a suspect)calls E and F. D (becomes a suspect)calls G and H. ... It is easy to quickly grow in number of wiretapped devices with a similar scheme, even after some deduplication, even "wrong numbers" will have become (temporarily) suspects and thus intercepted. What is impressive is the direct ratio of 26/3,292,385, which is more or less 1/126,630, I guess we could call it the "needle in the haystack" approach.