"The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, ..."
"The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, ..."
Why are there only 5 billion geolocation records ingested daily? Using a conservative estimate of 200 million devices, that yields an average daily ingestion rate of 25 records for each device. This seems really low.
It sounds like NSA may be culling the data aggressively, or the definition of a record may constitute more than just a single polling event. Perhaps both.
Keep in mind that the Bluffdale, Utah facility was not operational at the time the documents referenced in the article were created. It's possible ingestion of gelocation data has since ramped up.
"The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, ..."
Why are there only 5 billion geolocation records ingested daily? Using a conservative estimate of 200 million devices, that yields an average daily ingestion rate of 25 records for each device. This seems really low.
It sounds like NSA may be culling the data aggressively, or the definition of a record may constitute more than just a single polling event. Perhaps both.
Keep in mind that the Bluffdale, Utah facility was not operational at the time the documents referenced in the article were created. It's possible ingestion of gelocation data has since ramped up.