NSA Chose Invasive Phone Analysis Option

Encrypted Anonymous Coward writes "The Baltimore Sun reveals the existence of an interesting experimental NSA program codenamed ThinThread from the late 90`s. The program involved link analysis of traffic data, with a twist; The phone numbers from the U.S. would only be analyzed in an encrypted form. This way the analysis would potentially be possible under existing privacy laws, according to the people behind the program. The NSA could gather further unencrypted details if there was evidence of a threat. Political infighting seems to have dropped an interesting and respectful program from the books."

Comments

Privacy Issues

[alx5000]

Well, if that is legal, I recommend you to change your laws...

Anonimity isn't really privacy. When I say "I love you" or "I'm going to kill you" I want to know it's ME saying THAT to THAT PERSON who is meant to receive it, and to no one else. I don't wanna be an anonymous coward sending my thoughts over to the NSA and get busted because they can look up my IP if I've been a bad boy...

Re:Privacy Issues

[Enderandrew]

For better or worse, there really isn't a real "Right to Privacy" in the Constitution. The fifth amendment means you can't be forced to incriminate yourself, and we have laws about the collection of evidence.

However, people demand security. Often security and privacy conflict with one another and we as a society need to decide where that line needs to be drawn. If we don't want the government to look over our shoulders, then we can't bitch when they didn't see something coming.

Re:Privacy Issues

[MojoRilla]

For better or worse, there really isn't a real "Right to Privacy" in the Constitution. The fifth amendment means you can't be forced to incriminate yourself, and we have laws about the collection of evidence.

Uh...what about the fourth amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I would consider monitoring my phone calls to be an unreasonable search, without probable cause.

Re:Privacy Issues

[Total_Wimp]

I think you're misunderstanding. The proposed program would look at phone call records only, not actual phone calls.

So what? Sorry, I don't mean to be flipant, but gathering my confidential call data and looking for criminal activity in my mind is as much a search as a pat down. The fact that they're not actually listening to me talk sexy with my girlfriend is nice, but it doesn't correct the problem that a the state would be analysing the time and phone number of every call I participate in then they'd be making a determination of whether or not I was probably a criminal. When the government conducts routine searches of our routine daily activities then that, in my mind, is both unreasonable, and, as a result, unconstitutional.

TW

Re:Privacy Issues

[EvolveFuzzy]

The, "there is no right to privacy in the constitution," argument requires a strict interpretation of the constitution and it's amendments, and that you completely ignore the 9th amendment which specifically addresses the concept of unenumerated rights. I'm so tired of this myth.

Re:Privacy Issues

[TheCarp]

I don't care.

The problem here is and always has been the potential for abuse.

The FISA court exists for a reason you know. Why? Not because of some theoretical use of wiretaps to infringe on privacy.... because they were activly tapping the phone calls of people like Dr Martin Luther King in every hotel that he visited trying to dig up dirt on him.

This isn't conspiracy theory, its conspiracy fact. It is a matter of congressional record that wiretaps were indeed used to follow innocent people for political reasons.

Besides, sure, today its just intelligence on terrorists. However, once the system to do it is there, the ability to abuse it is there. All it takes is one unscrupulous operator, or a little pressure from a director, or dare I say, a secret presidential memo, to cause the system to be abused to any number of ends.

This is why we need oversight, and we need to hold these people responsible for what they do. If they can wiretap with impunity, then why not wiretap with impunity? If there is no punishment, then there is a lower bar to doing it.

Frankly, I think these programs should be outed, and every signle person involved, all the way up, should be indicted.

That goes for this program (if it was indeed illegal, if not they should fix the law), and the presidents wiretapping program thats been in the news. Intictments and impeachments are what should be going on right now.

-Steve

Re:Privacy Issues

[mjm1231]

Neither do I own the air which is used to transmit my voice when I speak to someone in a closed room, but it still requires a warrant to hide a recording device in the room. A person's speech is their effect, regardless of the medium used to transmit it.

Re:Privacy Issues

[smithmc]

  Obviously at the time of writing, phone lines didn't exist, but it's reasonable to see that as an "effect" belonging to an individual.

The switches that route your call, and record the source/destination/time, do not belong to you; they belong to the phone company. The same could be said about a written letter - the letter and its verbal content are yours, but the information about where the letter came from and where it is going are necessarily shared with the Postal Service, which then possesses that information and can do with it as it pleases.

Re:Privacy Issues

[Grym]

Well... for that matter, what about the Third Amendment?

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Bear in mind that quartering was not a military necessity but a way of finding and uprooting dissent at it's roots--the common household. They didn't just quarter at random. Suspected sympathizers were often specifically targeted for the simple reason that having a few brutish and nosey soldiers from the government in your house either makes you clean up your affairs or start explaining yourself in front of a judge.

The third amendment was a response to a specific type of attack on privacy by a people which had been traumatized by it. You can bet your powdered wig that if England had tried to read the correspondence of every suspected revolutionary (wire-tapping) or recorded data about every conversation that ever occurred in a public square and the parties involved (phone database), that those too would have been specifically mentioned as well.

Kept in its historical context, the third amendment represents a limit to the imposition of households and the government's ability to intrude upon the private lives of ordinary citizens.

But you know what? What about the Ninth Amendment?

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Any reasonable person can conclude that a right to privacy exists on some level. We shouldn't need a document of finite length, written over 200 years ago to tell us exactly what rights we, by virtue of our humanity, possess. In fact, this ridiculous argument we're having over whether a right to privacy exists or doesn't is the entire reason that the ninth Amendment was devised.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 84, said it best (emphasis mine):
"[I] affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not content that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it [an enumerated Bill of Rights] would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power."

-Grym

NSA track record

[cyber_rigger]

...and of course the NSA has an excellent track record of unbreakable encryption (in case these records get in the wrong hands).

Right.

[Rob T Firefly]

And be assured, citizens, that we will never, ever, let a curious finger wander across the board and idly press the beautiful, shiny button labeled "decrypt."

The jolly, candy-like button...

Trust not

[Red Flayer]

"* Analyzed the data to identify relationships between callers and chronicle their contacts. Only when evidence of a potential threat had been developed would analysts be able to request decryption of the records.

Says who? The NSA?

Who defines what a potential threat is? A judge of the court, or some bureaucrats in the NSA?

Why would we trust an agaency known to play games with the law to have access to this data? A layer of separation (the encryption) doesn't change the fact that the data is still there for misuse. Just because it's harder to tie to an individual doesn't mean it can be misused.

All the encryption does is make it harder for a rogue/spy to get access to actual phone numbers. Systemic abuse or misuse of the data is not prevented at all. And frankly, systemic abuse/misuse frightens me much more than one person being able to misuse the data.

Bullshit

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Political infighting seems to have dropped an interesting and respectful program from the books.

Big freaking deal if the numbers are 'encrypted' or not. The problem is not that the NSA knows people's phone numbers - that's why we have phonebooks. The problem is that they have this huge database that lets anyone with access draw all kinds of inferences about people's relationships with each other. The right to freely associate is not free at all if it means that you end up on some big list in a government computer (or anyone else's computer for that matter).

Having your phone number encrypted when it is in the database doesn't help a bit because the encrypted number is just another unique identifier. Its the equivalent of saying that they used social security numbers in place of the phone numbers.

In that example, get a warrant.

[khasim]

You have two "known" "nutjobs". If you want to know who they're talking to and what they're saying, then get a warrant.

That way, when they both implicate "B", you can immediately get a warrant to find out who "B" is talking to.

Also, you might find out that "C" is a "nutjob", too. Then you can get a warrant for his phone.

All very easy and all very legal under existing laws.

Re:Future options

[NMerriam]

The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.

On the contrary, the founding documents of this nation were very much a suicide pact.

The Declaration of Independence said it quite explicitly:

And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.

Or, to put it more succinctly, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death".

Life without liberty is not life worth living, and the founding fathers knew quite well that they would either succeeed or be killed as traitors.

And of course the irony is that the only way we would commit "suicide" (ie, kill OURSELVES, as opposed to being destroyed by external forces) is to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights, exactly as we're doing so well right now. No terrorist bomb can accomplish that task, we're doing it all on our own.

Bruce Schneier says it better than I could

[why-is-it]

For better or worse, there really isn't a real "Right to Privacy" in the Constitution.

Do you only have the rights that are explicitly defined in your constitution?

However, people demand security. Often security and privacy conflict with one another and we as a society need to decide where that line needs to be drawn. If we don't want the government to look over our shoulders, then we can't bitch when they didn't see something coming.

I think that Bruce Schneier's recent article in Wired is one of the most reasoned and insightful responses to your line of argumentation.

As he states, it is not a debate over security versus privacy - it is liberty versus tyranny.