(from Bob Woodward: Obamas Wars) "On the technical side, McConnell explained, the National Security Agency (NSA), which he had headed from 1992 to 1996, had developed a breakthrough eavesdropping capability. It had begun years before with a project code-named SHARKFINN that was designed to speed the acquisition, storage, dissemination and availability of intercepted communications, including cell phone calls and e-mails. The project advanced and was soon referred to as RT10, which increased the speed in real time to factors of up to 10 to the 10th power, or 10 billion times faster. It was now called RTRGReal Time, Regional Gateway. RTRG meant there was a way to capture all the data, store it, and make it instantly available to intelligence analysts and operators, allowing the U.S. to react quickly in response to the enemy." This is like developing a foolproof way to kill every mosquito in just your own backyard. It means nothing if you don't change the actual landscape within which you are working. In a landscape where I can lease an IP address, anonymously, at any street corner (worldwide), and where my entry and exit points are completely arbitrary and fungible ... nevermind the availability of strong crypto ... So this is just a subsidy to SAIC and Raytheon and Boeing (and Cisco and Juniper and Oracle) and has no meaning to anyone but the most inept and technically illiterate lawbreakers. Meanwhile, your Apple iPic photo gallery of this weekend in San Diego spins on a disk somewhere underground...