I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so.
Why? The former takes much more storage, so all other things being equal I’d expect it to be less likely.
My thought process was that wiretapping is a well-known tool used by the government, and I wasn’t surprised that they would have created a mechanism by which they could wiretap everyone.
As for why I expected phones more than online communication, that’s was availability bias on my part. I’m used to hearing about wiretaps, while similar news with emails either a government employee, who I would expect them to monitor, or a private individual hacking into an email account.
Why? The former takes much more storage, so all other things being equal I’d expect it to be less likely.
And text (email, chat) is also much easier to parse and search with computers than voice recordings.
That was miscalibration on my part.
My thought process was that wiretapping is a well-known tool used by the government, and I wasn’t surprised that they would have created a mechanism by which they could wiretap everyone.
As for why I expected phones more than online communication, that’s was availability bias on my part. I’m used to hearing about wiretaps, while similar news with emails either a government employee, who I would expect them to monitor, or a private individual hacking into an email account.