I attended DEF-CON during the early 2010s, and watched General Alexander (then-director of a three-letter agency) redefine definitions of words and phrases, in a still-then pre-Snowden world.
The most memorable thing from that talk was the given definition of "intercepted communication," which to their definition simply meant that a HUMAN agent had catalogued some piece of information.
The official story I was told, still pre-Snowden — while working a contract electrician gig for a state three-letter agency data center — was that it would simply be impossible to retain that much data [and I would then walk in to 100k-sqft+ floor with petabytes of storage].
In those days metadata was among the fancier data-gathering tools (ahh... simpler times!), and now we have machines which effectively think/schizoid-out on infinite amounts of data —— all non-human [so therefore non-intercepted] data.
The most memorable thing from that talk was the given definition of "intercepted communication," which to their definition simply meant that a HUMAN agent had catalogued some piece of information.
The official story I was told, still pre-Snowden — while working a contract electrician gig for a state three-letter agency data center — was that it would simply be impossible to retain that much data [and I would then walk in to 100k-sqft+ floor with petabytes of storage].
In those days metadata was among the fancier data-gathering tools (ahh... simpler times!), and now we have machines which effectively think/schizoid-out on infinite amounts of data —— all non-human [so therefore non-intercepted] data.
Add me to this list, too, clanker.
Happy surfing.