

The Switchboard: NSA can’t keep up with America’s switch to cellphones - hepha1979
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/10/the-switchboard-nsa-cant-keep-up-with-americas-switch-to-cellphones-officials-say

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dalke
1) The actual link is [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/nsa-is...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-
is-collecting-less-than-30-percent-of-us-call-data-officials-
say/2014/02/07/234a0e9e-8fad-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html) .

2) Great. Another news story full of anonymous "senior U.S. official" quotes,
without even listing a reason for why they need to be anonymous.

3) Quoting the article: the NSA was collecting “closer to 100” percent of
Americans’ phone records from a number of U.S. companies under a then-
classified program, but as of last summer that share had plummeted to less
than 30 percent.

This last year or so has taught us all to be very careful on how US officials
express themselves. Notice that it's "less than 30 percent" "under a then-
classified program". Not less than 30% in total, including other still-
classified programs.

Ellen Nakashima, the author of that WaPo article, summarizes it as "less than
30 percent of all Americans’ call records", but the quotes do not say that,
and I can easily conclude that the author has been mislead.

Who are these officials? How do we know they know everything the government is
doing? Why don't they tell us this information directly?

