As of when this prediction was made, the US government routinely saves a recording of a majority of domestic phone calls and emails, as per www.overcomingbias.com/2013/05/us-record-all-calls.html.

Created by ygert on 2013-05-08; known on 2033-05-08

ygert estimated 60% on 2013-05-08
dhoe estimated 30% and said “Half an hour per 300 million people at 500kB/minute gives me 4 petabyte per day. Divide by 2 (takes two to talk) and by 2 again (to have a majority), that’s a petabyte a day. Not impossible but not really practical either it seems to me. ” on 2013-05-08
RandomThinker estimated 25% and said “I doubt they archive it, maybe they scan it and store it for a little while.” on 2013-05-09
RandomThinker said “I think it would be too tempting to use it if they had it. They don’t have to be afraid of revealing the secret, because they can always pretend they had the phone tapped.” on 2013-05-09
hedges estimated 90% and said “Even Sweden does this. For ALL internet traffic there. See: FRA law. ” on 2013-05-09
dhoe said “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law says “warrantlessly wiretap” which while bad enough is not the same as recording a majority of all calls.” on 2013-05-10
hedges said “The Swedish version of that page has several sources, including FRA’s internal documents, that say they store all data. Choosing whose communications to spy on is unnecessary when you have the legal and technical ability to store everything.” on 2013-05-10
RandomThinker said “@hedges does that include phone traffic too?” on 2013-05-10
dhoe said “They store call detail records, not a recording. I’ve helped design such a system for a telco; we had roughly 30 TB uncompressed for the last 30 days. Purely metadata, no content. Challenging enough to handle.” on 2013-05-10
hedges estimated 70% on 2013-05-12
RandomThinker said “If they did this, the urge to use would be irresistable. Look at the IRS → tea party, and Justice Dept → AP reporters, Bloomberg → executives. They might keep it secret if it’s bigshots, but even the minions want in.” on 2013-05-14
RandomThinker said “Like the equivalent of DMV counter person looking up your record, which you do get stories of.” on 2013-05-14
RandomThinker estimated 55% and said “ok changed my mind. read this: http://www.businessinsider.com/greenwald-are-all-telephone-calls-recorded-and-accessible-to-the-us-government-2013-5” on 2013-06-05
hedges said “http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order” on 2013-06-06
RandomThinker said “@hedges yea that might be cover for what they already have (the recordings!) Like Cryptonomicon, they need to have a plausible reason why they know stuff.” on 2013-06-06
Patrick Brinich-Langlois estimated 20% on 2013-06-07
hedges said “Well, there’s this: They want to store “yottabytes” of data. One yottabyte is enough to store thousands of years of internet traffic. All of it. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/” on 2013-06-10
RandomThinker said “Like I was saying, if they had this, every govt agency will want to get their grubby hands on it. That competition protects us more than civil liberties. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/other-agencies-clamor-for-data-nsa-compiles.html” on 2013-08-05
ygert estimated 10% and said “If this were the case, it would be unlikely that Snowden would blow the whistle on the metadata gathering and not say a word about this. Perhaps he had only partial information and didn’t know about this, but the odds are way down.” on 2013-08-11
RandomThinker said “This is pretty close. And shows they have the technical ability. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57620529-38/nsa-can-reportedly-record-every-call-made-in-a-foreign-country/” on 2014-03-19