"A report leaked to the Guardian suggests that the NSA can get three billion pieces of information a month from computer records alone.". 3 billion records doe

"A report leaked to the Guardian suggests that the NSA can get three billion pieces of information a month from computer records alone.". 3 billion records doesn't seem to be that much. I mean, even with a desktop computer, having a month to compute something meaningful out of that doesn't seem far fetched. I really don't think they need sci-fi computers for all of that. 3B/month * 12months * 5 years = 180 billion records. That's a lot but large tech companies seem to deal with those kinds of numbers all year long.