It’s not just about who calls who. The NSA phone-monitoring project looks at how terrorists place their calls and then applies that model to everyone, to see who else might be a suspect. It’s a form of predictive data mining made famous by the notorious Total Information Awareness project.
“Armed with details of billions of telephone calls, the National Security Agency used phone records linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to create a template of how phone activity among terrorists looks,” according to USA Today. “The template, officials say, was created from a secret database of phone call records collected by the spy agency. It has been used since 9/11 to identify calling patterns that indicate possible terrorist activity. Among the patterns examined: flurries of calls to U.S. numbers placed immediately after the domestic caller received a call from Pakistan or Afghanistan.“
That’s new. When the NSA’s phone-monitoring programs came to light first in December, then again two weeks ago the projects were said to focus on “social network analysis.” Who knows who, in other words. If Osama calls your friend, and he turns around and calls you, the logic goes, you and Osama and probably linked in a common plot. If you don’t share anyone in common, you’re in the clear.
But, for prominent social network analysts, something didn’t quite add up. Building a database of “every call ever made” didn’t really help find those personal connections. If anything, the additional records made things even harder.
Today, we learn why everyone’s calls had to be in the target set. The NSA wasn’t just conducting social network analysis. It was using a more controversial data mining technique, dragged into the popular imagination by Darpa’s Total Information Awareness project. It focuses on prediction, not connections.
Under this approach, sophisticated algorithms hunt for patterns of terrorist behavior in information-trails, and then apply those patterns to average citizens, seeing which ones fit. It doesn’t matter who you know. It’s what you do that gets you in trouble. If you spend money and buy plane tickets like Mohammed Atta did, then maybe you’re a terrorist, too. Same goes for the kind, and frequency, of phone calls you make.
Using computer programs, the NSA searches through the database looking for suspicious calling patterns, the officials say. Because of the size of the database, virtually all the analysis is done by computer. Calls coming into the country from Pakistan, Afghanistan or the Middle East, for example, are flagged by NSA computers if they are followed by a flood of calls from the number that received the call to other U.S. numbers.
The spy agency then checks the numbers against databases of phone numbers linked to terrorism, the officials say. Those include numbers found during searches of computers or cellphones that belonged to terrorists.
It is not clear how much terrorist activity, if any, the data collection has helped to find.
(Big ups: Eric)
UPDATE 12:57 PM: “The NSA spying program… is fundamentally a system for identifying criminals by statistical analysis. Americans need to come to grips with whether they approve of this,” says Kevin Drum.
Take a different, but equally incendiary example. Suppose that we could semi-reliably create a statistical portrait of child molesters: their age, geographical location, gender, and calling and buying patterns…
Needless to say, the FBI could track these patterns using the same methods as the NSA and then exploit the results to create lists of “possible child molesters.” And it might work. But would we be OK with the FBI tapping someone’s phone just because they fit a statistical profile? Or staking out their house? Or investigating their friends?
And if we can do it for suspected terrorists and child molesters, how about tax evaders and unlicensed gun owners? … And if not, why not? After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why would you object to being investigated?
UPDATE 3:26 PM: Eric makes another great catch, unearthing these nuggets from an interview that First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams did on Charlie Rose’s show the other night. Abrams, it turns out, was on a privacy panel overseeing TIA:
We basically said if you want to engage in data mining, which we said was a very good way to gather information to fight terrorism, you should go to the FISA court to get permission…
The panel presented its conclusions to Secretary Rumsfeld–who, it might be noted, is also a boss the NSA, since it’s a military agency. Rummy thanked them, got some good P.R. and sent them on their way.
Asked by guest host Brian Ross, “Do you feel used?” Floyd said:
[I]t’s one thing to be on a commission and then be ignored. That’s –that’s life. But not even to be told that the government was then engaged in the very activities that we were writing about does seem as if we were being used, yes.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
” … to see who else might be a suspect.”
Yeah, suspects like Quakers, Sierra Club members, and PETA.
I feel so much safer, you’re doing a heck of a job Georgie!
Can the White House use this database to monitor opposition presidential candidates?
Were this program to be brought under FISA and approved by broad bipartisan Congressional majorities, we might assume that the answer was no, and that the appropriate checks and balances were put into place to prevent that from happening.
Given the deliberate failure to work toward anything like checks and balances, I see no reason to assume that such safeguards are in place… or that this database was not misused for partisan purposes prior to the 2004 election.
To answer Mr. Drum’s “… And if not, why not?”
At it’s most basic, it flies in the face of enlightenment principles as well as the founding principles of this country.
First a crime is committed, and THEN it is prosecuted. It is NOT the other way around.
As to his question of “After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why would you object to being investigated?”
I know some really nice, older retired guys, that spent time in Soviet gulags who said more or less the same thing as they were led away in the middle of the night.
Aha, it’s the Numb3rs theory!
Guy gets a call from Afghanistan, telling him his elderly mother just died. Guy then calls all of his US-based relatives to tell them the sad news. Guy gets flagged as a possible terrorist, and gets his calls monitored.
Yeah, I can see how this program is a good idea…
Adrian
Guy gets a call from Afghanistan, telling him his elderly mother just died. Guy then calls all of his US-based relatives to tell them the sad news. Guy gets flagged as a possible terrorist, and gets his calls monitored.
And let me finish that scenario, guy and those people he called are followed up cleared and dropped none of them even knowing such happened no inconvenient (no were near getting padded down at your local airport type privacy violation), short the minor privacy intrusion thats results are only action applicable in a terrorist scenario even if say they were caught in the follow up dealing some hash.
But then there is also that one in a million shot were that follow up hits a terrorist cell and we spare a couple thousand US innocent civilians lives.
By the way Adrian how many innocent peoples privacy is violated by at the minimum medal detectors at worst search of bags or even padded down? Add up all the people who have flown on airlines (well in the millions) then subtract the handful of terrorist who have hijacked or done terror on planes (less than a thousand total).
So bottom line Adrian should we end all airline searches and scans after all it is a rare case that they actually meet a terrorist but they dam sure violate millions of innocent peoples privacy hell their personal space yearly. All for what the proverbial needle.
And Sarge thats wild eyed but last time I checked I have not heard of any PETA, Quakers ect.. either being turned in to criminals or rounded up in these mysterious random arrest that happen as a result of this NSA program. But then of course somewhere in LLL conspiracy Bushitler land right now they are at your door Sarge what ya didnt know google also signed a pact with the Bushitler NSA and well they are out side your window right now run man run for your life YEEEEEHAAAAA.
If you guys could only hate and want to destroy our enemy the terrorist half as much as you unconditionally hate Bushitler this war would be over by now. To have to fight a foreign enemy and a portion of this nation that is at best not helping at worst outright fighting every effort we try to win or defend ourselves is devastating to our nation.
C-Low,
First of all, I don’t see why you trust that every single person in the NSA will always behave in an above-board way. Isn’t your whole theory of “can’t wait for the crime to be committed” based on not trusting that everyone acts in above-board way? That fact is exactly why there’s an oversight process, namely the FISA courts. That keeps some bad egg from doing the unthinkable and targetting his enemies with this software. And that’s exactly what so unnverving about the way this program was created – the NSA and the administration have been making all possible efforts to operate without oversight. If nobody’s targetting any political enemies, and everything’s hunky-dory, why run this program as if something shady were being done?
Second, several anti-war groups have already reported being spied on by the FBI in conjunction with this program. So there is a reason to believe that it might well be used against someone’s political enemies. And there’s plenty of liberals over at DailyKos just waiting to tap every call the oil execs make. After all, they’ve got plenty of reason to call Kazakhstan themselves, or to get calls from Nigeria, Sudan or Indonesia.
Eric
I do trust the NSA. I dont trust every person in it (human nature) but I do trust that the majority is above board and do want to do their job protect national security. Of course there is going to be some bad apples but where and in what is their not? Is their anything in todays technology world that cannot be abused by bad apples?
The FISA court issue is ridiculous we are talking about millions of pings the vast majority of such are followed up and dropped in the search for that proverbial needle. But do you really think the FISA court is capable of processing that many pings do you really thinks the NSA bureaucracy is large enough to make enough paper work to present such millions of cases to the FISA court in a reasonable time frame? So in that case the FISA court would have to basically give a blank check and self dissolve their own organization by such or they would be swamped and the reasonable time frame needed in case we hit that needle would be destroyed.
The current set up I believe is best approve limited massive pinging (with a temporary presidential decry by way of war) then when we get a hit or something calling for more intrusive follow up take that to the FISA and get it approved. I also like the additional insurance by making the gathered info only usable on Terrorism no other domestic stuff and that is backed up by the program being in the NSA a organization that is not even allowed to tread on FBI domestic toes.
The millions pinged in a non-intrusive minor privacy violating sweep is an acceptable price compared to other sacrifices of privacy like the air port searches, surveillance cameras, and other that have already been made.
If those anti-war groups or those oil company executives were making phone calls to questionable people or places or even people who by way of spider web is attached to terrorist then I hope they are followed up on and cleared or pursued.
Its no different than the airport screener that got caught abusing his job by feeling up women awhile back he was caught fired and run out. We didnt end the whole program of searches because of one bad apple and we didnt refuse to even use that tool of defense because such abuse could happen back when we enacted that policy after 9-11.
Bottom line you have to give a benefit of doubt to those attempting to defend US and fight this war. When and if we find a bad apple abusing the program for political, financial, whatever reasons then I will be with ya holding the rope.
Don’t let partisan mistrust blind you Right or Left when it comes to the Nations interest.
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