Retroactive Telecommunication Surveillance
So today, I noticed the "WE SPIED ON DIANA" headline on Drudge, and it made me wonder...
Does the United States have the capability to retroactively spy on somebody, after an event of interest?
We have radio telescopes pointed at the sky, recording everything that they hear for further analysis later. This analysis is the goal of projects like SETI@Home. Doesn't it make sense that we could use the same recording technology to record all of the radio transmissions from a place like Paris, or Afganistan? Then if a world event of interest happened like 9-11 or the possible assassination of a world leader, we could unleash supercomputers on those recordings and reconstruct the transmissions that originated from certain devices or locations?
It doesn't seem to far fetched. The intelligence benefit would be profound.
