Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get the message Siobhan Gorman at The Wall Street Journal is trying to convey (although, do a google search for Gorman and you come up with dozens of stories from him on intelligence gathering, it appears to be a pet peeve of his, how dare our intelligence agencies collect intelligence!). In a nutshell, telecom companies should not be given immunity because they already give up too much info:
Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.
The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency’s mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.
According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.
It isn’t clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency’s work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.
A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy “has never really been resolved,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.
NSA officials say the agency’s own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information.
Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item — and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city — for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans — the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.
The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.
The information doesn’t generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone’s location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.
Intelligence agencies have used administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI — which don’t need a judge’s signature — to collect and analyze such data, current and former intelligence officials said. If that data provided “reasonable suspicion” that a person, whether foreign or from the U.S., was linked to al Qaeda, intelligence officers could eavesdrop under the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.
When will the Democrats be happy? When there are so many new Gorelick walls and inept policies, ie the 1978 FISA act, that our intelligence agencies are once again hamstrung from doing their jobs? Who will they blame when those agencies fail to stop a future attack because they did not have access to information the Supreme Court has already ruled they can capture?
Take one guess.
Those same agencies because, well, they just should of figured it all out dammit!
In the year 2008 most of our communications are done electronically. To deny our intelligence agencies the ability to sift through transaction data is just foolish. The emails are not being read, the addresses are. Big difference. A beautiful example given in the report is the airline passenger data. Its analyzed for suspicious patterns like, for example, five completely unrelated people repeatedly flying together. When does a coincidence become much more? And shouldn’t that be something our intelligence agencies look into further?
The report goes into the Supreme Court ruling in 1979 that allows the capture of phone numbers but questions the relevance of it in todays world with such brilliant questions from lawyers like this one:
Ms. Spaulding, the national-security lawyer, said it’s “extremely questionable” to assume Americans don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data such as the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search, because those are more like the content of a communication than a phone number. “These are questions that require discussion and debate,” she said. “This is one of the problems with doing it all in secret.”
Gosh, why in the world would our intelligence agencies want this done in secret? I can’t think of one reason….
Come on!
And no Ms. Spaulding, we do not have an expectation of privacy on web addresses from an internet search or subject lines. If these lawyers and other lefties had their way our intelligence agencies would only.
See author page
This one of several things I have issues with electronic intelligence.
1. It doesn’t stop other countries from data mining U.S. material. That means the CIA could call Britian, Russia, China Israel etc. and ask them for information they aren’t allowed to get. This kind of information would be embarrising to Congress if China called saying they overheard two terrorists talking to each other in the U.S. and gathered that intelligence in a way the FBI and CIA weren’t allowed to use. I imagine that’s why the U.S. allows some countries to use Echalon (data mining software) so that our allies can spy on the U.S. in order to protect the U.S.
2. The CIA and FBI complain to the FCC that the U.S. shouldn’t apply certain security to U.S. telecommunications. That means that U.S. communications are less secure than any other country because the other countries use updated ecryption while the U.S. ecryption is 20 years old or older.
But what if the NSA accidentally catches a guy like Spitzer? Well now that he’s been found out, there is nothing for anyone to worry about, full steam ahead!
Back in the Olden Days of the stone-aged, outdated Em Ess Em, a reporter’s “pet peeve” was called his “beat.” It was the particular topic that he or she knew something about and covered on a regular basis.
Every electronic device we use on a daily basis emits a signal. Those signals can tell us a lot about what type of device it is, what its being used for; communications signals are no different. With the right equipment, everything is fair game — to civilian and government agency alike. Maybe it’s my background in signals, but any expectation of “true” privacy online is a little ridiculous. *Especially* when it comes to “the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search.”
Electronic communications are VERY non-secure. Your network administrator knows what you do at work. Your IP provider keeps records on where your webserf at home. Data minor “ad-ware” tracks your searches and web browsing history (despite efforts to get rid of it). Google and other search engines archive your search terms (ask.com has an option to disable this feature, but stores your data for weeks before dumping it). Webpages look at your IP and give you adds directed to your location. Your bank keeps tabs on your purchases to track credit fraud. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Even on this site (and probably every blog), whenever you post a reply, we see your IP and email address. We usually ignor this information, but it has uses. It helped me realize an imposter had posted under someone’s name as the imposter had a different IP (on a different continent) and email from the regular poster and take corrective actions. Information, like any ‘weapon’ is dangerous if used for malice but it is not the information that is the actor.
There is no privacy on the net, or anything electronic (like cell/text phones), unless you can ecrypt better than anyone interested can decrypt. Even that only lasts so long.
Siobhan Gorman has been writing on national security since she was at The National Journal. I thought the article was a nice summary of what’s what; she didn’t express an opinion. This is her job, she interviewed a lot of people, and a lot of them were NSA types. It’s a thorough article, and none of it is new to people who’ve been following FISA and the rest.
Disclaimer – I’ve been reading Siobhan’s work practically since she started working as a journalist.