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

Late 90's?

[geoffrobinson]

I hope the Bush-bashers will take note of the date.

And, no, Bush didn't build a time machine. And even if time travel is possible, he isn't smart enough. Or is today a day where he is an evil genius? Keeping track of the dunce/evil genius paradigm is too hard.

Not less invasive

[Anonymous Coward]

So Pres. Clinton's "less invasive" plan would "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."

So, since the phone data is garbled, "evidence of a potential theat" is merely your understanding of the callers' identities. But, under this 'less invasive' plan, intelligence agents can still request to tap the line when they beleive one of the callers is an enemy.

So everything is the same, except now we've got to wait 3 weeks for some redundant FISA warrant, then another 3 weeks for an overworked defense employee to decrypt our data.

Oh, meanwhile the terrorists have just rented a cropduster in Albany.

Great plan, but I'll take the current one.