How does "data may be queried only when there is a reasonable suspicion" = 20 million/month?

[leveymg]

1. Back in June, I wasn't that far off in my upper estimate of NSA profiling of 90 million callers/mo.

Here's the rule of thumb estimate contained in the longish analysis I posted on June 30 of the second set of NSA training slides released by Snowden: http://election.democraticunderground.com/10023134820

PRISM PROFILING estimate: 90 million callers each month.

SLIDE 4 shows that 117,000 persons were profiled as of April 5, 2013. That may not seem like a very large number. But, NSA analysts are also trained to look at all communications, “two hops” out from a targeted person. The implication of that is that the initial PROFILING step outlined in SLIDE 1 profiles very large numbers of persons, and thus has no real 4th Amendment protection for US persons profiled.

How can that be if the system segregates US person data and is court approved? Look at SLIDES 1 and 2, again. Keep in mind the flow chart that shows how PRISM works. Everyone who has been in communication with those 117,000 targets indicated in SLIDE 4 is also investigated, and (at another “hop”) everyone they have been talking to or emailing or texting or chatting on Internet boards. Because these numbers grow exponentially with each hop, that means that if those 117K persons targeted by PRISM called 30 people that month, and they in turn called 30, the PRISM analysts will have initiated investigations of some 90 million persons each month. That could be more than a billion people each year are profiled. Profiling on this vast scale is consistent with known NSA's statistics: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-online-metadata-collection

This confirms, in general, the two hops out approach but shows one of two things: 1) the NSA's search parameters at the initial PRISM profiling stage have additional factors built in that somewhat limits the potential search and targeting pools; or 2) the average number of new numbers dialed per month by the 117,000 NSA designated terrorists isn't 30 (as I guessed), but 9 or 10.