Re: Nice article...
One has to ask, if they monitored and thus knew everything, why were they not aware that 9/11 was about to happen ?. Cynic might say that perhaps they didn't want to, in the same way that Churchill might not have shared intel, that then brought the US into WWII. International politics can be a dirty business and not for the faint hearted. It's no use wringing hands and bleating about the rules, if the opponent ignores then to advantage.
Some monitoring is obviously necessary, with ISIS and other groups at the gates of Europe. Some of them will eventually get through. As for the data, if you want to see the size of the task, just look up the data flow per hour on the internet worldwide. I doubt if they could monitor more than a small fraction of that, much of which will be encrypted anyway. Targetted intercept is the only way it can work and I doubt if they are really that interested in the colour of your other half's shorts :-)...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
