Slashdot Mirror
Officials Say NSA Probed Fewer Than 300 Numbers - Broke Plots In 20 Nations
cold fjord writes "Yet more details about the controversy engulfing the NSA. From CNET: 'Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, explained how the program worked without violating individuals' civil rights. "We take the business records by a court order, and it's just phone numbers — no names, no addresses — put it in a lock box," Rogers told CBS News' "Face The Nation." "And if they get a foreign terrorist overseas that's dialing in to the United Sates, they take that phone number... they plug it into this big pile, if you will, of just phone numbers — it's like a phonebook without any names and any addresses with it — to see if there's a connection, a foreign terrorist connection to the United States." "When a number comes out of that lock box, it's just a phone number — no names, no addresses," he said. "If they think that's relevant to their counterterrorism investigation, they give that to the FBI. Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is."' From the AP: ' ... programs run by the National Security Agency thwarted potential terrorist plots in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries — and that gathered data is destroyed every five years. Last year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records ... the intelligence officials said in arguing that the programs are far less sweeping than their detractors allege.... both NSA programs are reviewed every 90 days by the secret court authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under the program, the records, showing things like time and length of call, can only be examined for suspected connections to terrorism, they said. The ... program helped the NSA stop a 2009 al-Qaida plot to blow up New York City subways.'"
That's not the problem. Just tell people what you're doing. Make sure that it's legal and ethical. Don't be shy of what you're doing. Then we might accept it.
Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is.
Unless they figure out that they can just run a check against the phone book. The scary thing is, this guy may be as stupid as he sounds.
Plain and simple. If this were at all true then each of these 20 incidences would have been widely touted in the media. They never would have had to give the source of their intelligence or at worst they could have \ would have said that inside information that was actionable was provided to their security forces.
Why would they need the names? There are lots of programs like 411 that can do a reverse look up on phone numbers.
If only the NSA had pulled 2 more phone numbers, adding the Tsarnaev brothers to their list of terrorists.
sudo make me a sandwich
First, the "we broke 20 plots" is bullshit. They have have used these tools in 20 investigations, so what? And what about the other 280 they admit to? And anyway, how many people's data was involved in each of these investigations? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
In any case, we still come back to the basic problem: The police could certainly stop a few more crimes, if they were allowed unfettered access to people's homes. See someone suspicious? Walk in and search the house, no warrant required. The point is: This price is not worth paying.
Why? For many reasons, but here are the ones that leap immediately to mind:
(1) People need to feel they have personal privacy.
(2) Government bureaucrats are humans: some good, some bad, most just muddling along. Put this kind of power in their hands, and it will be abused. Whether for political ends, to get back at the ex after a nasty divorce, or whatever. Because they work for the government, they will not be punished. See the recent IRS scandals for a perfect example of this.
It is important to limit government power, because this is the only sure way to prevent abuses. You can't abuse power you don't have. If this makes police work a little more difficult, that is a price well worth paying. Convince a judge and get a warrant before spying on someone - this just isn't that hard.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Once the word is out this database exists, other uses will be found for it, either by the NSA or by other organizations. History has proven that once data exists, people will use it any way they want to.
They can be almost as effective if they only start monitoring those phone numbers that are correlated to "terrorism" because they get dialed by a foreign terrorist. They'd miss "historical data" but I doubt the effectiveness of that will weigh up to the giant loss of privacy people suffer because their "metadata" gets stored.
Nobody has even proven the effectiveness of this sort of measures against terrorism, it costs billions and the elected government is spying on the people that elected them in the first place. If you, as a politician, don't trust the people that voted for you, your democracy as a country is in serious trouble.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
They didn't do it.
knowing there is a 'secret court' reviewing every 90 days....
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
But it still doesn't make it legal.
Do you have ESP?
We take the business records by a court order, and it's just phone numbers — no names, no addresses — put it in a lock box,
And who controls the key to this so called lock box? What accountable party keeps them from unauthorized use? The FISA court isn't accountable. Neither is the administration or congress since they do not publish their findings. By what method does the public find out about abuses of this system?
Last year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records .
Big deal. Nobody calls these days anyway. What about the rest of the phone meta-data? Emails? Text messages? Facebook? Twitter?
both NSA programs are reviewed every 90 days by the secret court authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
So we have a secret program with secret directives reviewed by a secret court whose findings are secret. Gee, why am I not reassured? [/sarcasm]
Well, to be fair, telling people what you're doing makes doing it pretty useless when "what you're doing" is covert surveillance.
Hardly. You and I are both well aware that our police regularly do covert surveillance of suspected criminals. The fact that they do so is public knowledge and we are fine with that. While it is sometimes necessary to temporarily hide the tactical details of a specific surveillance, it is not necessary to hide the existence of the program to do so or to hide the findings of such surveillance indefinitely. Furthermore the authorization for such surveillance is overseen by reasonably transparent judicial review, it typically limited in scope and time frame and the results of the surveillance are revealed to the public in due course.
The NSA on the other hand has a system where they have a secret program, with secret directives, overseen by a secret court, whose findings are kept secret. Though many suspected the NSA was conducting surveillance of some sort, the very existence of this program was kept secret from the public. At no point in this system does the public have any means by which to be notified of abuses of this system. The entire progress is treated as a secret and hidden effectively forever from public scrutiny. No reasonable person has a problem with the idea of our government looking for bad guys but the methods used matter greatly and not all methods are acceptable. This is EXACTLY like the end of the movie "A Few Good Men" where the government is screaming at us that we can't handle the truth and that they do not have to explain themselves to us. Cheesy as that sounds, it is a perfect analogy to what is going on here.
Were I in the same situation, I'd say the same thing, true or not. It might not justify the program, but it might make people feel better about it.
If they want people to buy it, though, they'll need to proffer some proof. Not just some documentation, but something concrete that would be irrefutable. The NSA has the problem that they are coming from a position of weakness. They're in the business of being secretive, they've been caught in a position where they appear to have betrayed the nation's trust, and they'll need something extraordinary to restore that trust.
They should just lay all their cards on the table - declassify all of it. The ne'er-do-wells are already tipped off and working around it, so there's little more to lose if they'd been on the up-and-up. Clearly, if they weren't doing anything wrong, then there's nothing to hide.
If the phone spying program is so inconsequential, then what does the NSA plan to do with the $5.1B data data center they're building in Provo, UT? 300 numbers a year could be checked by one guy in one cubicle, and he'd still have lots of time to spend hanging around the water cooler.