The need for all kinds of communication equipment and for improved quality and quantity of communications pyramided beyond the immediate capabilities of industry.
GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.
Nicknamed "Rock Island East" after the U.S. Army's Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, the area contained more than 6.5 million rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition, 500,000 rifle rounds, thousands of rockets, several General Motors trucks, and large quantities of communications equipment.
"The US is by no means necessarily the only non-Council of Europe security service with which the UK intelligence services have a close working relationship, and from which they may obtain and use large quantities of intercepted communications and communications data," noted a second lawyer for the group.
The plans to collect vast quantities of data from our communications and internet usage and from our movements across British borders remain unchanged, despite the vast hole in public finances and feints by ministers to give the impression they were responding to civil liberties concerns.
Electronic communications offer companies unprecedented quantities of information about who buys what from them.
"Under this program, the government is spying on the international communications of Americans in vast quantity without ever obtaining a warrant, and it is storing those communications in FBI databases for use in criminal investigations.
Such systems are also being used in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where the technology is known as Carnivore because it is able to extract the "meat" quickly from vast quantities of e-mail messages and other communications between computers.
On its return voyage, the vessel brought back huge quantities of Mexican silver and church personnel bearing communications from Spain.
The most important event of the past decade has been the growth and widespread use of the Internet, which, in accelerating and multiplying communications and transactions across borders, has converted quantity of communications into quality and created a new social realm that transcends local activity and subverts the concept of identity.
