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« Social network analysis, the NSA, and “pattern analysisâ€? | Main | NSA data mining—what patterns to look for (I) »
4 January 2006
Before I get to what might be done with the data, a little more on the data that has been collected, from James Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (2006):
Following President’s Bush’s order, US intelligence officials secretly arranged with top officials of major telecommunications switches carrying the bulk of America’s phone calls. The NSA also gained access to the vast majority of American e-mail traffic that flows through the US telecommunications system. (p. 48)
The telephone network today is digital and computerized, but is still built around a switching system that routes calls from city to city, or country to country, as efficiently and quickly as possible…. In addition to handling telephone calls from, say, Los Angeles to New York, the switches also act as gateways into and out of the United States for international communications…. [I]t is now difficult to tell where the domestic telephone system ends and the international network begins. (pp. 49-50)
One of the secrets of the Internet is that its infrastructure is dominated by the United States, and that much of the world’s e-mail traffic, at one time or another, flows through telecommunications networks that are physically on American soil. (p. 51)
Posted by David Lazer at January 4, 2006 9:57 PM