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From: 1314jb@houxf.UUCP (J.BOKOR)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.flame,net.politics
Subject: Re: Big Brother
Message-ID: <841@houxf.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Dec-84 22:51:29 EST
Article-I.D.: houxf.841
Posted: Mon Dec 10 22:51:29 1984
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>>  I am amazed at the naivete of those who underestimate the capacity
>>  of the NSA.    ...         You better believe they're listening
>>  to everything, including encrypted messages especially.

>...that translates into more than 10^6 MIPS worth of processing.  That's
>about 1000 Crays and we haven't even begun to talk about encrypted data...
>...it is impossible to believe that the NSA could be doing speach (sic) 
>recognition on EVERY line.

Oh, come on, grow up! (-:)  First of all, 1000 Crays is a gross
everestimate of the expense of carrying out such surveillance.
Be creative!  This is a *highly* parallel problem.  You want a
tremendous number of identical pattern recognition machines.  Think VLSI.
I concede that they can't handle the speech traffic, but don't be so
quick to dismiss the possibility of large scale electronic data
surveillance.  I also concede that they don't listen to absolutely
*EVERYTHING*, they have to be selective.  

Also, don't think that the NSA are the only ones out there listening,
there's also the Soviets and the Japanese to think about, just to name two.