What is the basis for this suspicion? If it were true, that's what people would have reported on from Snowden's millions of leaked documents instead of simply metadata (call data records).
Specifically, AT&T has transitioned its PSTN backbone fully to SIP, which is a form of VoIP: "AT&T will exchange SIP traffic at the access border controller layer (i.e. SBCs, more specifically Acme Packet SBCs) via IP handoff at a few "strategic locations," directly peering with a select number of Tier 1 carriers. AT&T will also provide transit and direct termination through its network and support all roaming traffic to interwork with other wireless carriers" [2]
So both voice and data are going over the same fiber lines, since it's all IP (which reduces costs considerably.) We know that Room 641A was one of many QUANTUM locations, where traffic was beam-split. [3]
It seems from [4], that we have confirmation that TURMOIL and INCENSER snarf up PSTN as well as IP. Since all of that was working well before 2010, and we know TEMPORA acts as a buffer for high-volume stuff (fed by the Narus machines), and voice is IP now because of SIP, I feel reasonably confident it's getting stored at some duration at the exchanges.
1. https://www.lanshack.com/fiber-optic-tutorial-network.aspx
2. http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com/topics/enterprise-voip/articl...
3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
4. https://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/11/incenser-or-how-n...
"We keep the full sessions for 3 working days and the metadata for 30."
The filtering you're talking about would happen in POKERFACE, which applies after intake into TEMPORA. Basically:
Backhaul -> TEMPORA (3 day buffer) -> POKERFACE (scrubs data by policy such as US citizen status) -> XKeyscore
Room 641A was part of the WINDSTOP programs run by SSO, comprised of MUSCULAR, INCENSER and DS-300. According to [1], the NSA mass-collects VoIP partly through XKEYSCORE, FALLOUT and TURMOIL (harvested from INCENSER/DS-300/others), and PSTN through LOPERS (though it's unclear if LOPERS ingests domestic (INCENSER) data or just Europe<->Asia (DANCINGOASIS) data.)
Incidentally, it's pretty impressive how much scale they handle. The DANCINGOASIS cable transfers 25Pb per day, while 3-6Pb were analyzed. And that's on a totally black op (no corporate knowledge) tap! Seriously cool.
1. https://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/05/nsas-largest-cabl...
No, the US gets some of GCHQ's intelligence reports, not all of GCHQ'S data.
> According to [1], the NSA mass-collects VoIP partly through XKEYSCORE, FALLOUT and TURMOIL (harvested from INCENSER/DS-300/others), and PSTN through LOPERS (though it's unclear if LOPERS ingests domestic (INCENSER) data or just Europe<->Asia (DANCINGOASIS) data.)
Do you even read your own sources? INCENSER (https://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/11/incenser-or-how-n...) designates a cable that links Europe and Asia. None of the collection points you listed are domestic, and none of them collect comtents, only metadata. In Snowden's documents, the only contents that were collected were in regions hostile to the United States.
Read https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Minimization%20Procedure... for an executive summary of NSA data collection, which all of Snowden's documents agree with, once you understand what they say.
The A5/1 cipher has been totally pwned, without even needing a crib, but it's still used for voice traffic. The NSA is allowed to store and decrypt all of this, AFAICT, through this loophole.
2. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.
It's true that James Clapper was not employed by the NSA at the time the question was asked. Are you suggesting that therefore he does not know the answer? If he does not know the answer then why did he answer the question?
> 2. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.
The question posed in the linked video clip is "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?".
No, I'm asserting that any statements by Clapper can't show the NSA lying about anything any more than statements by Trump can show the NSA lying about anything because neither is part of the NSA.
> The question posed in the linked video clip is "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?".
And the video is irrelevant to the discussion both due to the point above and due to the discussion being about recording content of conversations, as I said in GGP.
Over the past few weeks and several threads, you've consistently asserted that NSA/CIA don't bulk-collect Americans' data, with no citing proof. Did you fill out an SF-86 or something?
I do not work for the US government any more than you work for the Kremlin. Obama called for a "thoughtful fact based debate" over government data collection policies in the wake of the Snowden leaks. By spreading nonsense, you are preventing that debate from occurring.
How about the article you linked for a citation? If you had read the article you posted, you would have known that it doesn't support your full-take of content claim.
Exactly the same as with GGP, my citations are the articles that you and he posted.