In the UK last year the government proposed a large database of every phone call, internet search and email sent within UK territory and, predictably, there was an outcry at a 'Big Brother society'. Shortly after this the plans were toned down, instead making ISP's and Telecommunication companies hold said information and make it accessible to the Government when requested. It would seem we were lucky.
The US however, may not have been so lucky.
After 9/11 the Bush Administration the scarily Orwellian sounding 'National Security Agency' was given billions in additional funding. meaning that recently it's operations have taken a step up, one such 'improvement' is the creation of a $2 billion building, a third larger than the US capitol buildings and requiring an energy consumption equal to that of Salt Lake City.
What, you ask, is to be stored in this super-structure?
Well, exactly what the UK government wanted to hold. details of all phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital 'pocket litter'.
This information will add up to 'Yottabytes of data' by 2015.
does that not mean much to you?, probably not. well, here's some perspective:
A Yottabyte is equivalent to 1024 Bytes. Or, a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.
The scale of this is so large numbers past Yottabytes have not yet been named!.
And, to give us some credit, at least our Government announced this to the public, and then scaled it back when they realised it was unpopular.
In the US of course this is all without any public discourse or input. God Bless Democracy.
The Full Article can be read here,
Shep
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