Comment by strictnein
3 hours ago
Yes, I'm well aware of XKeyscore.
If it required ~700 servers in ~150 locations (mostly US military bases and embassies) to surveil a small slice of internet and other traffic back then, how many would it require now? How many locations would those servers need to be situated? And how would NSA positions situated in embassies capture all of that Internet traffic in a foreign country without getting noticed?
Just think through the logistics of all of this and try to think of a way that any agency could accomplish it in 2026. And now think of all the people in the industry who would have to have at least some knowledge of it, or be able to discover a part of it.
Those are just some of the things one would need to explain and rationalize to even suggest that the NSA is doing what some of the people here are claiming.
You think the politicians are going to say "The career employees made some convincing arguments about why this is impractical / immoral, guess we'll give up our unregulated power/omniscience"? Or, they will raise the military budgets and continue skipping the audits.
You’re talking about two different things.
One is where their hardware for storing data is. The other commenter was talking about global taps (the sources for the data), of which the Wikipedia article is not speculating the number of.
> how would NSA positions situated in embassies capture all of that Internet traffic in a foreign country without getting noticed?
ISP taps globally, undersea cable taps, the list goes on.
Most Tier 1 network owners are U.S. companies or U.S. friendly companies, tapping undersea cables is not necessary in many cases, just ask the owner.