OP here. Stretch is an interesting machine that can claim many firsts. The 8-bit byte, CPU look ahead, an interrupt system, and error checking amongst other mod

OP here. Stretch is an interesting machine that can claim many firsts. The 8-bit byte, CPU look ahead, an interrupt system, and error checking amongst other modern features. It had 3/4 of a megabyte of random access memory. A colossal amount at the time. I want to make sure I don't overplay Harvest's keyword search ability. The NSA would physically walk down the street and grab reels of magnetic tape every day from ITT, RCA, and Western Union. So they're working with relatively structured data from international telegram cables. Still impressive, but much more limited. Your analogy seems appropriate and the activity is fundamentally very similar. The repeated violations of the constitution demonstrates the natural inertia of such an entity.