
Three degrees of separation: breaking down the NSA's 'hops' surveillance method - sethbannon
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/nsa-files-decoded-hops
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a3n
It should be _one_ hop out from someone actually suspected and under
investigation, and then each individual hopped out to is briefly analyzed for
innocuous vs suspicious communication. Then out once from those few
individuals again.

"That would be too hard." Well, good. They aren't supposed to be figuring out
how to spy on everyone. The Constitution made it hard by design, and it's only
recent technology that allows them to do this mostly unnoticed.

Three hops out from anyone who looks cross-eyed is just a construction of
convenience that looks reasonable to a sleepy or collaborating judge, and
results in being "allowed" to spy on virtually everyone.

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logn
With 25 'friends' online, your 3rd degree network of contacts is estimated at
667,489. Global population might be 7 billion. 7,000,000,000 / 700,000 ==
10,000.

I'm guessing 3 degrees was chosen because the NSA has enough targets to
basically monitor anyone then.

