A few current and former signals intelligence guys have been checking in since this NSA domestic spying story broke. Their reactions range between midly creeped out and completely pissed off.
All of the sigint specialists emphasized repeatedly that keeping tabs on Americans is way beyond the bounds of what they ordinarily do — no matter what the conspiracy crowd may think.
“It’s drilled into you from minute one that you should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an American citizen,” one source says. “You do a lot of weird shit. But at least you don’t fuck with your own people.“
Another, who’s generally very pro-Administration, emphasized that the operation at least started with people that had Al-Qaeda connections — with some mass-spying master list. As the Times, in its original story, noted:
The C.I.A. seized the terrorists’ computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said.…In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.…Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
But this call chain could very well have grown out of control, the source admits. Suddenly, people ten and twelve degrees of separation away from Osama may have been targeted.
Deputy Director for National Intelligence Michael Hayden hinted at what might be going on in a press conference yesterday:
And here the key is not so much persistence as it is agility. It’s a quicker trigger. It’s a subtly softer trigger. And the intrusion into privacy — the intrusion into privacy is significantly less. It’s only international calls. The period of time in which we do this is, in most cases, far less than that which would be gained by getting a court order.
That points to a diferent type of technology at work, as I suggested the other day. Senator Jay Rockefeller, in a remarkable pair of handwritten letters (one kept for safe keeping, in case someone tried to say later on that he approved of the program) seems to back this point of view.
As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter’s TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance.
TIA, of course, would be “Total Information Awareness,” Darpa’s effort to find potential enemies of the state in the data trails of ordinary folks. The program was cancelled a few years back. But a whole bunch of similar efforts continue throughout the government.
A former sigint type — who also talked to Ryan, apparently — suggests a different technological approach: the NSA “may have compromised a hardware manufacturer — say Motorola or a satellite phone manufacturer, a telecom carrier or a satellite(s).“
I’ll keep my ears open.
UPDATE 11:27 AM: There’s a ton of surveillance-related news that has come out in the last day, including:
- FBI spied on PETA
– Bush personally asked the Times to kill its NSA story
– “Pentagon’s Intelligence Authority Widens“
– DoD: gay law school groups a “credible” terror threat
UPDATE 12:22 PM: Laura points us to an absolute must-read post from Bill Arkin today:
In the spring of 2001, NSA began to change direction in its counter-terrorism targeting under Lt. Gen. Hayden: rather than analyzing the mass of what was collected hoping for the gem in the growing mass of available material, NSA began a methodical process of dissecting terrorist target communications practices and network to determine what to collect. This is commonly referred to at NSA as hunting rather than gathering. It was a procedure that was in its infancy on 9/11.
So what happened? The perceived shackles of domestic collection were removed, the gathering process began again to overwhelm the hunting process, new software, data-mining and link analysis methods were applied to isolate potential domestic targets.
UPDATE 2:07 PM: Check out Bruce Schneier for a quick history of domestic eavesdropping. Our old pal Hannibal from Ars Technica rounds out the review. And Garrance from around the block dives into the data mining laws.
Good Morning Folks,
With all the response both supporting and not supporting President Bush one thing seems to stand out, I couldn’t find anyone supporting the reason that President Bush gave for what he did.
It appears that the notion that anything so far exposed regarding the NSA or how it goes about doing what it does has given any aid and comfort to al Qarea or any other terrotists.
The readers of this blog seem to grasp the notion that we are dealing with a sophisticated foe that is as versed in EW as the United States is and that the margin of difference the U.S. has is rather thin.
It would seem to me policicaly at least that it might be more in President Bush’s interest to make know some of our success that this information has provided to the United States.
I’m now even remotely suggesting that all NAS activities be made public but many of the so called “Classified Events” are pretty general knowledge among those who chose to follow the events of the GWOT. I think in the long run this would assure the American people that we are prosecuting a vigorous war against the terrorists.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Basically after the 9/11, there was a discussion on domestic spying on the people to target, or identify potential Al-Queda operatives. But seriously folks, it would not matter who would have been President to sign in this domestic spying.
The best way to end this terrorist crap is to arm every man, and woman over the age of 18, and declare open season on Al-Queda, et al.
All I know now is we finally have it. But I tend to wonder who is running scared. But what label do we name it? KGB, or Gestapo. It was bound to happen anyway.
Next, we will have the Ausweis. A domestic ID Card. Whenever a person wishes to move to another city, they need to register their new residence with der standesamt. Hallo Germany, et al.
So, if you think sex offenders are required to register wherever they go, think about the ordinary citizen who will also be required to register wherever they go. The only difference is that the sex offenders are the criminals, and the ordinary citizen is not — or are they?
Think about it.
If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you care if they check on you? What ever it takes to get rid of the bad guys. DO IT!
The copy, and collection, of US persons has always been a taboo subject. I have 24 years of SIGINT experience and the intentional collection of US persons, or companies, data is verboten.
This is just another example of the BushHaters grasping at anything available to make a point. Please take a moment to read the following:
http://cryptome.org/ussid18-guide.htm
You’re scarin’ me. Especially Pete who just thinks this is partisan clap-trap and John who thinks the world is divided cleanly into good guys and bad guys. (Are you ten?)
Domestic spying chills dissent. If even one less person shows up for a protest or writes a letter, it’s had that effect. And if you think there is never room or need to object to government or corporate action in our Country, I think you should get out from behind your computer more. Coco
In all of the comments on the NSA domestic signal intercept activity, I have seen no suggestions from anyone who read the 911 Commission Report describe what measures they would implement to prevent the terrorist teams currently on the US from planning their attacks, as they had prior to 911, according to the report. The media,et al, always accuse us of re-fighting the last war. No one has even suggested how we should have fought the terrorists who planned the attack within the US boundaries. If anyone has a way to find the cells operating in the US that does not involve gathering sigint data on people communicating with terrorists overseas, post it. The NSA has gone down paths that led to dead ends, or to just plain good citizens. As a result of these actions, they are being accused of spying on innocent US citizens. For those who have joined the “Attack NSA” band wagon, I would ask you to provide the a priori knowledge the NSA needs to know which links lead to deadends and which lead to other members of a terrorist cell?
The Congress in their role of advise and consent directed the President to take all measures needed to prevent future attacks like 911. He is doing just that. The FBI and CIA need to know where the terrorist cells are in the US and what they are doing in order to prevent them from intiating another attack. I would like to hear how they can do this without gathering sigint on the cells.
Perhaps the President should issue an executive order that all terrorist must register with the FBI and authorize the intercept of all of their phone and email traffic. Then when the next terrorist strike occurs, the President can point to his executive order and say: “The terrorists broke the law, and your government did everything in our power to protect you, now get off my back.”
In medicine, it is known as informed consent. If the medical authority does not present ALL the pertenant information they are liable, and should be punished.
Should the president of the United States be held to a lesser standard when it comes to violations of the US CONSTITUTION?
My concern about this whole gathering on U.S. persons is simple. Federal law SPECIFICALLY says that U.S. SIGINT elements will not collect against U.S. persons. The authority the Administration is claiming authorized this simply said “all means necessary”. I never realized that “all means necessary” included violating U.S. Code, Statutes, and Laws. For those wondering my credibility on this… 19 years in the SIGINT business, with a portion of that involved in writing directives, that had the force of law, authorizing and limiting SIGINT activities with regards to U.S. persons.
If you don’t have anything to hide and you are not doing anything illegal what the hell do you care if someone listened to you cell phone conversation. Does it really matter that someone heard that you were going to stop at teh store to get a gallon of milk.
I don’t have a problem with the NSA gathering or hunting for information. My question is, What are they going to do with it?
I heard about an arab fellow in a flight school in Minnesota who was insistent on learning to operate this particular aircraft. Did not want to know how to take it off or land it. Damn! Even pre9/11, that should have rung somebody’s bells! It didn’t. Why wasn’t that guy thoroughly interogated? Who made that decision? Is that person still in a position to do something just as stupid?
So somebody has all this information, whoopee. I don’t get a ticket everytime I violate the speed limit. What is the big deal? Somebody may/may not be violating rights I didn’t know I had. Who cares? On the other hand, if there actually are terrorist cells operating secretly in the land, somebody ought to be hunting them out and destroying them. Since they operate in secret, they ought to be destroyed in secret. With all this secrecy going on, it’s inevitable that sometime, somewhere, somebody’s rights are going to be trashed. I’d rather have someone apologize to ME for violating MY rights than have them apologize to my next of kin for not protecting me.
Damn straight beezer! I like the idea of pre-emptive strikes against potential wrong doers hiding behind the unnecessary obstruction we call Amendments 1–10. For example, I read that upwards of 40,000 people a year are killed with firearms. That’s a lot of people!
The Constitution ain’t a suicide pact, and we shouldn’t let it stand in the way of our public welfare! All those potential death-dealers out there hiding behind the 2nd Amendment should be dealt with immediately. Collect all the guns and protect all the lives, that’s what I say. Yeah, we might take a few guns from innocent people, but that fact is mitigated by the additional fact that we will take guns away from criminals too.
Perhaps we should contact Pres. Bush about this.…
The goverment is spying on you.
This is the big news?
Do you thought they ever stoped since we first heard it in the 70s?
Same difference.
No one hear said anything about the inocent people that are held in Gitmo and other secret prisons around world where they are tortured, abused.
Is the freedom of an american more important than the freedom of any german, french, russian, mongolian, etc?
You agree that other nationalities, citizen of other countries should be spyed by the NSA, CIA or other organization as long as the person is not american?
While in the US Army, I operated in two military specialties, 971AH and 972A, and worked in America, Europe, behind the Iron Curtain, and Asia. I did not care about anyones personnel data and to this day I can not remember any of the subject names although I can remember some of the facts of each case. I went wherever the trail of evidence lead, wrote the reports, forgot the names, and went on to the next case. I never meet an agent who took any joy in this work other than serving his fellow citizens.
It is another folly to believe that the Bush Administration did not know they were breaking the law. This administration is hell bent on making the common American Citizen just another dollar to be made on. Watch, later, Bush is going to say it was bad Intelligence that said he could spy on Americans. The Cheney Administration is also hell bent on making sure that no one, that is no one, is in charge, except his administration. How much more will America take of these two liars. Republicans, I now know how much you hated the Clinton Administration, because I hate yours even more. It is time to look at Impeachment of these two liars and the great Industries they represent. Our Constitution is torn to bits under these two power hungry liars.
I am surprised at the comments of those that are so upset over the issue, especially the expletive heavy thread. I have 20+ yrs as a “spook”, and I reserve my judgement until more info is available. I don’t believe any laws were violated. If it led to even one arrest or thwarted terrorist incident, then it was worth it.
Contrary to some of the other points of view, the agency has always had the ability to intercept domestic targets, but it had to be approved by the Atty Gen (or competent authority). It appears the President has the authority. If the finger wagging were not so politically biased, I could understand the debate, but instead I am angered by a seemingly endless agenda to throw mud.
We are at WAR, and I am know the SI-system well enough to know that anything not terrorist related will be dropped/shelved. The operation was/is threat specific, and normal citizens having normal conversations will not trigger the “threat threshold”.
At most, I am surprised that the president did not cover the legalities by getting the Atty Gen’s signature, which would have been much easier than digging out of another lame-duck attack by his opposition.
Having formerly been employed by the United States Air Force/National Security Agency as an intercept operator I cannot imagine how anyone would care or have the time to monitor routine telephone or e-mail conversations between US citizens not somehow tagged as potential security threats. There is too much information to be concerned about anything else besides national security. In this day and age I am sure there are not enough linguists and/or intercept operators to be concerned about casual communications between non-threatening entities.
Posted by: Airlee Owens
“There is too much information to be concerned about anything else besides national security. In this day and age I am sure there are not enough linguists and/or intercept operators to be concerned about casual communications between non-threatening entities.“
First, this administration has clearly put national security behind their own political power, and paying off their cronies. Second, ‘non-threatening entities’ would, in the mind of this administration, definitely not include politician or journalists who don’t tow the administration’s line.
I feel our government NSA collection agency is doing things right. I, as a retired military citizen, have no worries about my email being watched by the NSA ageants since I personally do not send any overseas eamil nor do I recieve any in the long run.
We need the NSA to watch our backs and discover who in the USA are connected to Al Queada. Yes, I approval of President Bush’s action to go ahead and get the job done.
No, I am not worried that next he will be checking for our guns unless we are tied to the Al Queada forces.
tally1, you are correct, we need to find out who are the bad guys, and we should pursue them and halt them.
What has happened here has nothing to do with that. If the government needs to monitor comm between some al qaida baddies and some American citizens, that’s legitimate. That can be done, with a retroactive approval. There still is NO justification for warrantless surveillance.
It’s sweet that you are confident that Bush won’t be after our guns. What about his successor? What if it’s President Kerry or President H Clinton (President Sharpton — LOL)who decides the executive can ignore laws and the Constitution? President Bush is establishing a precedent that in “wartime”, his duties trump our rights. But that will convey to the next president. Surely the GWOT will still be happening then. And which of our rights goes next?
ross perot cincidently relocated his edge software database for the nro at the same time i surrendered my at&t edge software to the u.s.post master general. mine was of the laguna sort
The secrecy behind this may have been due to what they were using the technology for.
The secrecy behind this may have been due to what they were using the technology for.