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NSA Head Asks How To Spy Without Collecting Metadata
jfruh writes "NSA Director Keith Alexander, testifying before the Senate this week, got weirdly petulant, asking his critics how he was supposed to do his job without collecting metadata on American communications. 'If we can come up with a better way, we ought to put it on the table and argue our way through it,' he said. 'There is no other way that we know of to connect the dots.' He also implied that major U.S. tech companies might have greater capacities than his organizations, and that they should help him out with new ideas."
Is he doesn't know how to do his job without violating all our rights then he should be replaced.
He means, how can I spy without spying?
You can't.
+----------------- | What is the question!
you obtain the necessary warrant and then perform whatever action is necessary without breaking the law. was that so hard?
So instead of actually doing targeted investigations, you've decided that collecting everything about everybody is the best way to go about it, and if you happen to pick up unrelated stuff for which you had no probable cause, too bad.
Sorry buddy, but just because you can't figure out how to do your job without turning the country (and the entire world) into the worst sort of Big Brother environment is YOUR problem.
And since you've decided that the easiest way to do this is to spy on the whole planet -- fuck you, because the rest of the world hasn't consented to that and doesn't give a shit about the challenges of you doing your job in compliance with the law.
All I'm hearing is "waah, how are we supposed to spy on just some people without effort, warrants, probably cause, and following the law?".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Dammit I don't mind him getting the metadata he actually needs tp defend the United States. What I object to is the idea that he gets ALL the metadata without showing any need for the vast majority of it.
The 4th Amendment was written with the express intent of forbidding general warrants. Yet that's what we have.
Stop it.
Constitution first. If you can't do what you are trying to justify within the bounds of that very plain-language document, then you DO NOT DO IT.
It would be easy to stamp out all domestic abuse. Just post a federal officer in every couples' bedroom.
Same applies for violent crime with firearms; turn every home upside down and confiscate every firearm you find. If any "missed" or hidden turn up later, immediate death penalty. Possession or use after this point - also immediate death penalty.
It would sure make the cops' jobs easier! We should totally do that! Except it's flagrantly in violation of both the spirit and the word of the Constitution - just like the NSA's metadata dragnets - so too fucking bad.
Do your jobs above board, according to the law. You know, those pesky things you make and ignore, but we serfs have to follow? Those.
So, despite its long and productive pre-history as a Black Chamber and special-ops division during the Cold War -- before the dawn of the Internet -- now the NSA claims that the only way they can do their job is to do things we find to be unacceptable.
Turn. It. Off.
Thanks for making it easy.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
"NSA Director Keith Alexander, testifying before the Senate this week admitted he's not qualified to protect us from terrorism." He said " I have a limited imagination and can only come up with one illegal solution to the problem". This is despite the fact that many terrorist plots have been discovered without violating rights, and his spying solution has failed to stop others. All he has is a hammer so every problem looks like a nail.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
The cost of freedom is that you must acknowledge that you must remain vulnerable to attack. Otherwise you destroy the freedom you are supposedly trying to protect.
In this case, that the job exists at all is the problem. That makes the solution simple and elegant. The only remaining issue, is accepting that everytime somthing bad happens, we are necessarilly limited in our ability prevent it.
The government cannot ever make me safe. all they can do is protect my liberties, and over the last 12 years they have been doing a piss-poor job of it.
Given that the NSA utterly failed to "connect the dots" before Sept. 11, 2001, before the shoe bombing attempt, before the underwear bombing attempt, before the Times Square bombing attempt, before Tim McVeigh and Eric Rudolph and Ted Kaczynski and the Boston Marathon bombers, I would say the illegal methods by which trying to "connect the dots" aren't worth a damn, either. Not for their publicly-stated purpose of foreseeing a future terrorist attack.
If he's talking about "connecting the dots" *after* an attack, then it should be pretty goddamn easy to get a warrant for that investigation.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
How am I supposed to spy if we don't collect data?
The question assumes that spying is needed. This is an unproven assumption. We have no evidence the spying is needed or beneficial, it has been proven only harmful or at best useless.
We're not threatened by other large nations because we have Mutually Assured Nuclear Destruction. Therefore the scaremongers had to invent a new bogieman: Terrorism. The threat is inconsequential. Falling in the bathtub is a greater threat to American lives than terrorism. You're about 4 times more likely to get struck by lightning than die in a terrorist attack. Accidents and Heart Disease kill FOUR HUNDRED TIMES more people EVERY YEAR than a 9/11 scale attack. When you compare the threat of terrorist attack to any other real threat to human lives their scaremongering doesn't match the facts.
Six times more people die from the flu every year than a 9/11 scale attack. We need proportional protection. The budget to protect us from terrorists is out of control. The anti-terrorism budget should be AT MOST one sixth of the budget we spend on ant-flu or 1/200th of the anti-accident budget, 1/200th the anti-heart-disease budget. How much does the government spend to protect citizens from lightning attacks? Is it FOUR TIMES the NSA's budget?!
The government needs no secrets. Our army is big enough and we are powerful enough that we need keep secret nothing. If nothing is secret, you need not fear spies, eh? They've taken the limited power we gave for them to have secrets, and used it against their own people to create a Stasi-like despotic apparatus -- The very thing our soldiers have fought against. Who will answer the call to fight for a government who's action has become indistinguishable from the enemy? The NSA has damaged us, stripped our honor, and shamed us in the world's eyes, our technology sector is suffering due to distrust. The NSA is a threat to national security.
The people should KNOW they can trust their government. We must not allow them to keep secrets. No one has proved the secrets are needed. We are brave enough to risk 400 times the threat of a terrorist attack by driving to McDonald's for a kid's Happy Meal. The public shouldn't have to wear tinfoil hats fearing government spying of citizens unless the government is also handing out lightning insulation suits. We should be able to prove their actions are not harmful to the people or violations of our constitution. We can't do this if there are secret unconstitutional actions.
PRISM is not the first spying apparatus. There was Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, Five-Eyes, and more. Remember how the PATRIOT Act granted immunity to the ISPs retroactively for their assistance in violating the 4th amendment? Yes, remember BEFORE 9/11 how the NSA had secret rooms in telco buildings where all the fiber optics ran through -- Where it was apparently split by mirrors to create PRISM? BEFORE 9/11?!?!!?! OK, NSA. Your fucking move. Prove you are not fucking pointless, you fuckers had your decades of spying on all communications and you FUCKING FAILED to prevent the worst terrorist attack we've ever faced! We even gave you MORE powers and you FAILED again to prevent the Boston Marathon Bombing. The ball is in your court to stand down, the evidence is not in your favor, pushing the issue will get you eliminated for good.
Expensive + Useless = Unnecessary; NSA == Unnecessary.
I'm a scientist, so before we agree to continue funding for these expensive and pointless pork-spending protection systems, including the DHS, I need hard evidence that they are needed. As it stands the facts prove these expenses should be stripped from the budget and given to health care, and research, or at the very least, NASA. The biggest thre
Asking for "a better way to do X" presumes that X should be done to begin with.
"Help us find a better way to torture prisoners!"
Naturally the Senate didn't challenge him on this presumption just as it didn't hold him accountable for lying to them to begin with.
What a dolt.
You don't own the phone lines, either, or the Postal Service, right? But (landline) phone calls, and (snail-) mailed correspondence are long understood to have First and Fourth Amendment protections.