Statistics on phone calls, text messages, emails,etc.

[Savannahmann]

11. In the 1960's and 1970's, the US Navy was doing that and more.

The navy was sending Submarines into Russian Waters to plant taps on the undersea cables that were used thousands of times a day. That was with 1970's technology. Each tap pod was designed to gather the data by induction, because they could not risk cutting and splicing the cable underwater. Each pod was more advanced than the one before, recording for weeks, and then months. Later pods were programmed to scan conversations, recording only those with the best most valuable information. http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/holystone.htm

Again, this was with technology from the era that saw the slowly reducing use of vacuum tubes in televisions. The 8 track ruled the audio era because of it's convenience and ease of use. And we were designing and building pods that would attach to a cable on the outside, and through induction gather the phone calls from the soviet naval bases, to their higher commands, as well as hundreds of purely personal calls every day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-submergence_vehicle

So you tell me, if we could do that in the 1970's, what makes you think we are unable to manage something similar today? Has our technical sections of the intelligence business gotten dumber?

More info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells

If you want a picture of the tap pod captured by the Soviet's, and on display in a museum in Moscow, more info at this site. http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/ic2000/ic2000.htm#N_32_


Tap pod captured by the Soviets inside their waters.


Tell me again why you think it is impossible?