There are a ton of problems with data mining for potential enemies of the state. Privacy is one, of course. But another is its questionable utility. It doesn’t make you a jihadist, because you’ve e-mailed Chris Allbritton, who interviews guerillas sometimes. Or because you’ve said “bomb” and “trainwreck” in the same overseas call. Just look at all the hijinks with our “no-fly” lists, to see what an imprecise science we’re talking about here.
So I guess I’m not surprised to learn from tomorrow’s New York Times that the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping project — which some seem to think is awfully similar to a rather infamous data mining program — produced a “flood” of tips, and “virtually all of [which] led to dead ends or innocent Americans.”
More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret eavesdropping program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.
“We’d chase a number, find it’s a schoolteacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism — case closed,” said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. “After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration…“
Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency’s computerized scanning of communications coming in and out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up.
F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor, who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs, said intelligence officials turning over the tips “would always say that we had information whose source we can’t share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative.” He said, “I would always wonder, what does ‘suspected’ mean?”…
Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced “mountains of paperwork” that was often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.
“It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads,” the former senior prosecutor said.
Of course, any wide-spread investigation is going to mean a ton of dead ends. But, under normal circumstances, if there’s a problem with the information you get, you can go back to your sources, ask more questions, hit them up again. If all you’re getting is a list of names and numbers, however, there’s no follow-up possible. No chance to prioritize the information. No way of telling whether this run of the algorithm is actually going to work, this time.
UPDATE 01/07/06 12:03AM: Does it strike anybody else as odd that the NSA’s “unofficial ambassador,” author James Bamford, is now suing to stop the domestic spying program? Do you think he’d be doing that without the tacit approval of at least some of his contacts within the agency?
UPDATE 01/01/06 12:29 PM: Al Gore was one of my least-favorite presidential candidates of all time. But he’s got this NSA thing nailed.
President Lincoln, of course, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, and some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after World War I, with the notorious red scare and “Palmer Raids.“
…But in each of these cases throughout American history, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, our nation recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.
But there are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing so that this cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power.…
A second reason to believe that we may be experiencing something new, outside that historical cycle, is that we are, after all, told by this administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to last, in their phrase, “for the rest of our lives.“
And so we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other presidents to justify arrogations of power will in this case persist in near perpetuity.
Third, we need to be keenly aware of the startling advances in the sophistication of eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to easily sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and then mine it for intelligence. And this adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies grows.
Those technologies do have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways that are both subtle and profound.
Don’t misunderstand me. The threat of additional terror strikes is real and the concerted efforts by terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction does indeed create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the executive branch with swiftness and agility.
Moreover, there is an in fact an inherent power conferred by the Constitution to any president to take unilateral action when necessary to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat. And it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.
But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for many years and producing a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.
...
It’s not a question of if, but when this country turns into Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”:
Sam Lowry: I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you’d like to make, I’d be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms.
Mrs. Buttle: What have you done with his body?
I love how everyone points to the fact that their is 10yr old and 80yr names on the No-Fly list who could never be terrorist as evidence of its failure. Common guys its called identity theft. People just pass off the fact that terrorism is by the sheer fact of being forced into the shadows tied somewhat to criminal elements. Noah do you really think its not possible for a terrorist to get a fake “stolen identification” and do you really think that name should not be on the No-Fly list until found as identy theft victim? Then still monitored everytime it pops up, like air marshall and tails on both ends.
And to our friends at the FBI yeah alot of dry leads but as the IRA to Britian made clear “you must win all the time we only have to win ONCE” that translates into turning over all the leads possible becuase it only takes ONE, so follow up do your job, stay alert, and treat everyone like the one.
Not to disagree, but it was Congress– not the CIA– who ripped up our human intelligence networks. Check it out under the Frank Church Senate Committee.
“Those technologies do have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways that are both subtle and profound.“
Gore is absolutely correct. For instance, at one time a person could contact the leader of their Al-Queda cell, either by phone or on the internet, with virtually no chance that this important exercise of their civil liberties would be detected or prosecuted. First they came for the Al-Queda members, but I was not an Al-Queda member, so I said nothing…
If 30 year old terrorists are trying to fly using the identities of 10 year olds or 80 year olds, the solution is to spend more money on training staff to look at ID, not to set up a No-Fly list.
I would agree with the fact that our intel abilities are weak and that their is alot of errors and false leads I would definatley agree that our human intelligence is a pale terd of what it was in a bygone era.
But this is the kicker we dont have the luxery of years, decades to wait while we built the human intel back up. We must today leverage the advantages we do have while we at the same time attempt to fast track the human intel.
Technology spying like it or not is one edge we got we should use it for all its worth. Their has been some big improvements in human intel repeal of alot of laws. It will take time to rebuild. And in the meantime thier will be mistakes and errors. Thats the price we pay for past paranoia and gutting of the Intel ability of the US with paranoid red tape bueacracy lawyers.
And no matter what party or pres you blame for the crippling of our intel ability dont forget the main thing that caused all the laws and the problems is the mentality of immediate thinking the worste of our intel agency. Just like this wire tap stuff, the same mentality that automaticly kicks evil evil abuse abuse (even thou none has been found yet) is the same mentality that crippled our Intel ability in the first place.
So next time, why didnt we see it comin, could have should have, what about the human intel, remember what crippled our intel agencies. Hyperventalization over pure suspect of possible abuse. That F-16 flying over my home could wipe out my whole neighborhood but I trust that pilot not to abuse his power.
I value my civil rights and my privacy but as long as the gov dont abuse the privledge and only listen for terrorism tap my phone all your want// abuse that power use it for whatever blackmail partisan politics on either side, then I will be with you guys pitch fork in hand in the full lynch mob mode. Until then give the guys the benifit of the doubt and some slack damm. They are trying the best they can and they want what we want.
Anyone who quotes the New York Times is someone who has a disregard of the facts. Having a sensible discussion with someone who has a disregard of the facts is sense-less.
Exactly what is the acceptable ratio of false leads to successful leads when one successful lead can prevent an act like 911?
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