> >> "Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on
> phone conversations and other communications in the United States.
> >
> >
> >
> > I'd like to know where that number came from.
>=====================================
> >From columnist Fareed Zakaria in the current Newsweek:
>
>http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/04/zakaria-why-america-overreacted-to-9-11.html,
>
>basing himself on a series of articles "Top Secret America" last
>July by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin,
>which can be sourced here:
Meaning this unequivocal statement : "Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications in the United States."
Is based on this equivocal one:
"Beyond all those obstacles loom huge buildings with row after row of opaque, blast-resistant windows, and behind those are an estimated 30,000 people, many of them reading, listening to and analyzing an endless flood of intercepted conversations 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/secrets-next-door/print/