Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

You know, people keep repeating this assumption that the NSA stores every post that people make online. Maybe someone should do a quick back of the envelope calculation to see how feasible that actually is?

My guess is that it's nowhere near possible given the amount of network traffic coming into/out of the US and current hard drive storage technology. IMHO the extreme amount of volume and limitations of storage space should create a necessity to be at least somewhat targeted in scope.

Not sure why people don't use common sense a bit more often...




> the extreme amount of volume and limitations of storage space.

Speak for yourself then. I've already got 10TB of storage at home in a case the size of a shoebox. It's got my entire life in it (at least every file I've created since university), but most of it is storing my movie and music collection. So, realistically your entire life can fit in a 1TB drive once you exclude videos and transcode audio. 2-4TB if you're a person of interest.

Do know that 1 Backblaze 4U-server holds 135TB. They are building a datacenter in Utah with 100,000sqft[1] of rackspace. 20,000 racks per floor (I don't know if there are multiple stories) gives you 29.7 petabytes if they used a Backblaze solution.

So yes, if the US govt wanted to record everything you did everyday they are more than capable of doing it, now.

[1]http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/


They are sitting on at least an Exabyte. With multiple-Yottabytes of traffic.


You're right, I'm off by a few magnitudes. 29.7 exabytes if they use every square foot for servers JBOD. And that is with current disk tech.


So somebody else should do a calculation, and based on the result of that calculation which you didn't do, people should use common sense more often?


You know, people keep repeating this assumption that the NSA stores every post that people make online. Maybe someone should do a quick back of the envelope calculation to see how feasible that actually is?

Think of Google. The have downloaded and stored lots of the internet. How else can they search it?

So if we know at some level that it's possible, could the NSA do it?`




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: