What’s behind the NSA domestic eavesdropping program? And how bad it is, really? Defense analyst Willliam Arkin and law professor Orin Kerr have competing theories.
Arkin takes a peek at section 126 of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act Of 2005, which requires the Attorney General to submit a report to Congress “on any initiative of the Department of Justice that uses or is intended to develop pattern-based data-mining technology.” He wonders if that data-mining might be what the NSA is up to.
Patterns of activity associated with actual terrorists in the past are derived from investigations and debriefings — let’s say, for example, visas from certain countries, calls from public phone booths to Pakistan, renting of cars with newly acquired driver’s licenses, one-way airline tickets. Patterns are used to trigger “tip-offs.“
Massive amounts of collected data — actual intercepts of phone calls, e-mails, etc. — together with “transaction” data — travel or credit card records or telephone or Internet service provider logs — are mixed through a mind-boggling array of government and private sector software programs to look for potential matches…
The law says “the search does not use personal identifiers of a specific individual or does not utilize inputs that appear on their face to identify or be associated with a specified individual to acquire information,” I take it to mean the new computer-based data mining isn’t looking for an individual per se, it is looking at information about all individuals (at least all who make international telephone calls or send e-mails overseas or travel to foreign countries according to the government) to select individuals who may be worthy of a closer look.
In other words, with the digitization of everything and new computer and software capabilities, the government couldn’t go to the Court or the Congress and say, “hey, we’d like to monitor everyone on a fishing expedition to find the next Mohamed Atta.”
Senator Jay Rockefeller and others have made noises that the NSA project reminds them of the most notorious of data-mining efforts, Total Information Awareness, or TIA.
But Kerr, leafing through James Risen’s new book, says that “it seems less likely to me than it did before that this is a TIA-like data-mining program.“
“As best I can tell, the NSA program was not actually recording domestic Internet traffic, putting it in a database, and then ‘mining’ it for key words and the like,” he writes. Instead, what went on is packet-sniffing — “installing a monitoring device on a steam of traffic that looks for specific sequences of letters, numbers, or symbols… [like] phone numbers and e-mail accounts… For those with criminal law experience, this was basically a large-scale pen regsister/trap-and-trace or wiretap, depending on how the filters are configured.“
Which, of course, would be a whole lot less scary than some ginormous profiling project. We’ll see.
(Big ups: David)
UPDATE 10:50 AM PST: FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley calls BS on claims that the courts somehow got in the way of catching Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker.” NSA whistle-blower Russ Tice, says he wants to talk about the agency’s “highly classified Special Access Programs.” A little birdie tells me that he won’t be the last.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Why would Tice choose to first go to that pinko tinfoil hat factory Democracy Now? Link: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/1435201. Those people make World Net Daily look sane.
I used to work at NSA when I was in the Air Force & as far as I am concerned, we knew & know what we are doing there! There is a reason for all the things we did & people should not be reviewing what NSA is doing! We are all highly trained & detect many things in the world that should or should not be going on. Trust the Military & other NSA workers for once!!
This NSA “spying” operation is problematic. On the one hand, I absolutely agree that if you’re within the U.S. you have NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY in your communication with anyone involved with Al Qaeda. It would be like expecting to have your communications with the Japanese protected by the 4th amendment in 1943. It would be absurd to expect that you could communicate by phone or email with the enemy in time of war, and that that communication should be protected. If, in fact, the Executive Branch of government is monitoring communications and/or activities of people in contact with the enemy overseas then I have no problem with them doing so….Except….
I don’t trust the Executive Branch of government, nor do I really trust any branch of government. Government is not your friend. By its nature, government will always seek to expand its power, and ultimately the result of that will be an erosion of our individual liberty. That is why the framers of the Constitution established checks and balances, and divided power among 3 branches of government. They understood that power corrupts, and that no one in government could be trusted.
That being said, the problem is (as I understand the issue…admittedly my understanding of it is incomplete, as I don’t know all the details of what the NSA is REALLY doing, nor should I…it’s a secret!!) that the Executive Branch of government is carrying on this activity with no check or balance from the other 2 branches of government…no warrants, no judicial review, no congressional review, etc.
Perhaps my suspicion is unwarranted. MAYBE the Executive Branch of government really is my friend, and maybe they really do care about me, and maybe…just maybe…I CAN trust them not to eventually steal my freedom. But I don’t think I’m willing to take the chance.
In short, YES, I want the NSA to stop these people. YES I want the Executive Branch to have the power to monitor communications and gather information to break up terrorist cells and stop terrorist attacks. YES I realize we are at war, and that this activity must go on. BUT…not without judicial and/or congressional review of the activities of the executive.
How do you know they are only looking at communications between AL Quada? In order for them to know it was Al Quada in the first place, they have to listen in first and decipher the intent and parties to the communication. If the NSA secretly knew who every Al QUada agent was and what specific communications were “Al quada related”, the war would be over. Please grow some brains.
And Amy, I suggest you read the Constitution. And all those fancy machines you use, someone else in the next room over could be using them for not so honorable purposes. Such as political espionage, industrial espionage, and profiling the citizens in this country to carry out a more sinical conspiracy.
Data mining, keywork searching, discerning intent, mood, emotion, of all the communications has been going on for the last 10 years. It is nothing new, just people are ignorant and the majority in this country think it is needed.
Im going to start talking in code when I use the telephone, this way the NSA cant figure out wth im saying. Either that or I will start making comments like “Must blow up the big guy”. “Its time”, and “Big rover is in the hangar, time to roll”. Either that or I will come up with a dynamic algorithm that only me and my party will be able to decipher. Thatll teach them.
Too bad everything I do on the internet is monitored.
BOMB
UNITED STATES
AL QUADA
(Sorry was just attracting the attention of the NSA’s super domestic spying supercomputer with three randomn w0rds)