INSIDER INFO: 6 million wiretapped conversations per month

Facts from IBM
In a quirk of fate, I met someone from IBM who was directly involved in implementing the wiretapping system that is all over the news. It is much worse than the news would suggest.

As some have reported, this is definitely not just NSA. The bidding for the technology to do this project was conducted by members of the FBI and the CIA. During the proposal process, IBM was told explicitly that they were to answer questions, not ask them.

One of the most noteworthy comments was that the Government had specified 60 Terabytes of monthly storage for digital versions of conversations. MONTHLY!
At about 11k per call, that is about 6 million conversations per month.
(correct my math if you are better at computers!).

This is enormous.
People in the press are concerned that they are tapping the phones of people without just cause. What they are really doing is much, much worse.
In reality, they are tapping hundreds of thousands of lines all the time.