25,000: Number of requests reported by Verizon alone
300: Number of those that were from federal agencies
17: Number reported by federal agencies to federal watchdog
If you read the link, you'll see that it's a very narrow particular kind of search that is being reported upon, only a tiny subset of all the electronic searches done by law enforcement in the United States, and even in this narrow area, the reports are grossly wrong: when Verizon reports 300 requests were made just to Verizon in a particular year and the report shows less than 20, I'm willing to bet that Verizon's numbers are more accurate.
So frankly even in this very narrow category, the numbers ARE probably two orders of magnitude higher, and if we were were to look at all electronic searches in the USA, it would be several more orders of magnitude higher. (And then if we were to look at the "national security" semi-legal surveillance going on in the U.S., it would be another many orders of magnitude higher.)
The government has way over stepped it's bounds in response to the terrorist threat. I realized it first when I read a New Yorker article on the NSA[0].
In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with “dictionary selection,” in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”
...
Even in an age in which computerized feats are commonplace, the N.S.A.’s capabilities are breathtaking. The agency reportedly has the capacity to intercept and download, every six hours, electronic communications equivalent to the contents of the Library of Congress. Three times the size of the C.I.A., and with a third of the U.S.’s entire intelligence budget, the N.S.A. has a five-thousand-acre campus at Fort Meade protected by iris scanners and facial-recognition devices. The electric bill there is said to surpass seventy million dollars a year.
when would they announce their co-location (and/or AWS cloud type) services? It can be a nice additional revenue stream (colo/cloud revenue is 5-10x electricity, ie. hundreds of millions per year in this case) that would ease US federal budget problems.
