Marc A. Thiessen:
As President Obama prepared to address the nation on surveillance, the New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has developed the capability to access computers that are not connected to the Internet. According to the Times, based on classified documents obtained from Edward Snowden, the NSA uses “a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into . . . computers” or in some cases “a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.”
Evidence of another NSA plot to spy on Americans? Not at all. The Times reports, “There is no evidence that the N.S.A. has implanted its software or used its radio frequency technology inside the United States.” And the NSA confirmed that the “N.S.A.’s activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only against — valid foreign intelligence targets.”
In other words, this (no longer) secret program poses precisely zero threat to American civil liberties.
So what is the redeeming social value of the Times’ story? What “abuse” is being revealed? Why is this something the public needs to know?
The answers are: None. None. And it isn’t.
Before this disclosure, terrorists believed that if they did not connect to the Internet, they were “off the grid” and out of range of NSA surveillance. Now they know that is not true. As a result they can take countermeasures — and stop using the offline computers the NSA was monitoring — which means we will lose access to vital streams of intelligence we needed to prevent an attack.
As one former senior intelligence official told me recently, stories like this are nothing more than “espionage porn.” They serve no greater social purpose other than to titillate.
And this is just one example. Consider: Snowden has exposed the fact that the NSA had infiltrated the computer networks of Tsinghua University in Beijing, which houses one of China’s six major backbone networks through which Internet data for millions of Chinese citizens pass. This activity has no implications for the civil liberties of Americans, but the revelation did enormous damage to our intelligence efforts in China.
NSA collects millions of text messages daily in ‘untargeted’ global sweep