NSA Metadata Collection Program Has Stopped Zero Attacks

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NSA Metadata Collection Program Has Stopped Zero Attacks

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 20, 2013 @08:23AM from the raise-your-hand-if-you're-surprised dept.

Antipater writes "According to a member of the White House panel that recently called for the NSA's metadata-collection program to be curtailed, that program has not stopped any terrorist actions at all. This runs counter to the stories we've heard for months, which claimed as many as fifty prevented attacks. 'Stone declined to comment on the accuracy of public statements by U.S. intelligence officials about the telephone collection program, but said that when they referred to successes they seemed to be mixing the results of domestic metadata collection with the intelligence derived from the separate, and less controversial, NSA program, known as 702, to intercept communications overseas.'"

41 of 199 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Wait a second... by SteveFoerster · 2013-12-20 08:25 · Score: 5, Funny

You mean the lying liars who lie for a living... lied?

--
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
1. Re:Wait a second... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-20 08:36 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Sorta... the 702 program did catch some (apparently ~50). The 215 program has caught 0. 702 and 215 are the same program just segmented along foreign and domestic lines. The 215 program apparently caught 0 because they actually do not have enough data. As apparently the smaller phone companies were like 'you are going to pay for that right?' The NSA decided not to pay. (hey I read the article :))
  The way I read that was they wanted more money to buy more data. Nevermind all that constitution stuff and right and wrong to do it at all...
2. Re:Wait a second... by SteveFoerster · 2013-12-20 08:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Tell that to Boeing, who just lost a major deal with Brazil over this.
  
  --
  Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
3. Re:Wait a second... by TWiTfan · 2013-12-20 08:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  They could have said it did stop an attack but its a secret.
  That's essentially EXACTLY what they said. They claimed several prevented attacks but refused to provide details.
  
  --
  The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
4. Re:Wait a second... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-20 09:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Morons. Really. Both the Captain Kirk wannabees that run the agency and their private sector "partners". Besides Boeing, we now find out that IBM hid a couple of billion in lost business with China stemming from the Snowden leaks from their shareholders. This just underscores for me that the people running things got where they are through a combination of luck and ruthlessness rather than smarts and discipline. Those of us old enough to have lived through the Cold War pretty quickly made the connection between what our government has been up to now and what went on in the police states on the other side of the Iron Curtain (although perhaps not with the same sense of dejavu that Angela Merkel does). That anyone involved in this still has not been impeached or fired is probably an indication of how far gone we are.
5. Re:Wait a second... by rnturn · 2013-12-20 09:14 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It certainly is somewhat surprising that the security community and the State Department didn't foresee something like this happening as a result of the spying. How large their blinders must be to have missed this.
  
  --
  CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
6. Re:Wait a second... by khasim · 2013-12-20 09:19 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  They claimed several prevented attacks but refused to provide details.
  And given the way they publicise the "attacks" that they "stop" which are really just an informant giving fake bombs/weapons to some nut job ... you know they'd be shouting any successes from every rooftop they could get to. They'd be doing the talk show circuit and hosting their own news conferences.
  The first problem is that the kind of "terrorism" that they want to focus on is almost non-existant in the USofA. The real terrorists had one huge success and that's all.
  The second problem is that the real terrorists don't spend time gossipping on the phone with all their terrorist friends. Yes, it is a way to map out a social network. But this isn't Facebook. Sam the suicide does not have to call Bill the bomb every Tuesday at 7 to chat.
  The metadata and phone location are useful for reconstructing the final days and those contacts AFTER an attack. And they don't need years of data for that. Or even months.
7. Re:Wait a second... by phrostie · 2013-12-20 09:21 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  so do we still need the new 1.2 billion USD data centers?
  http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57281931-90/agency-center-changes-data.html.csp
8. Re:Wait a second... by s.petry · 2013-12-20 09:25 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  As the AC says below, this is not the only victim but the first major one to be published in detail with the exact verbiage because of the NSA. This should also make you question all of these reports claiming "economic recovery" in the US. It was reported back in June when the leaks first came out that CISCO lost numerous contracts due to the NSA. [snark]But of course we are all just crazy conspiracy theorists, so the facts below are nothing more than racist attacks against Obama [/snark]
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/how-nsa-mass-surveillance-hurting-us-economy
  http://business.time.com/2013/12/10/nsa-spying-scandal-could-cost-u-s-tech-giants-billions/
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07/nsa-snooping-could-cost-u-s-tech-companies-35-billion-over-three-years/
  http://www.storyleak.com/nsa-spying-us-companies-billions-american-job-loss/
  http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/nsas-prism-could-cost-us-cloud-companies-$45-billion/d/d-id/1111178?
  
  --
  -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
9. Re:Wait a second... by Minwee · 2013-12-20 10:10 · Score: 2
  
  And this is Captain Picard's office, not Captain Kirk's.
10. Re:Wait a second... by cold+fjord · 2013-12-20 10:42 · Score: 2
  
  Secrets from everybody. Marvin is dead. He doesn't know how or why. Marvin and his friends don't know if it was because he used a cell phone, or was followed, or if there is a spy among them, or if somebody dropped a paper at the gas station and it was turned in to the police.
  To get a better understanding of this issue, look into the use of Enigma against the U-boats in WW2. Britain was in danger of being starved into submission if the U-boats weren't stopped. The breaking of the Enigma code was a vital national secret. Had it leaked out the Germans would have been able to take countermeasures easily and rapidly, and that could have cost the Western allies dearly, and many more people would have died. The Allies took enormous precautions in multiple ways to prevent that from happening. And yet people here treat the loss of top secret information from Snowden as nothing more that releasing the list of ingredients in a popular sandwich.
  
  --
  much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
11. Re:Wait a second... by Opportunist · 2013-12-20 11:51 · Score: 2
  
  Working for whom?
  Arresting people for some made up offense is easy. Ask any former Soviet dictator.
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
12. Re:Wait a second... by Runaway1956 · 2013-12-20 15:11 · Score: 2
  
  There is NOTHING "small" about our military industrial complex. For every $100 spent on military needs throughout the world, about $30 are spent by the United States. I think that figure is probably inaccurate, because "defense" in the United States is an umbrella that covers activities by the NSA, DHS, the Coast Guard, and more. Reading various sources that cite "military spending", I get the impression that they are only using money allocated to the DoD. That is, the $30 figure above only covers spending by the Department of Defense, while other military type funding escapes notice.
  Which other nation on earth has allocated more than a billion dollars to supply their spy agency(s) with a data center? It would be fair to ask which other nations even have a billion dollars to spend on intelligence.
  The US government has run amok, and some people think that is a wonderful thing. More rational people don't share that view.
  
  --
  "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
13. Re:Wait a second... by Falconhell · 2013-12-20 16:05 · Score: 2
  
  In all fairness you are an obvious shill. You have made yourself a target for down mod of every post due to
  the blatant nature of your shilling.
The NSA probed our anus and found shit by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-20 08:28 · Score: 5, Funny

The NSA probed our anus and found shit. What else is new.
I doesn't matter by NoKaOi · 2013-12-20 08:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

No politician that already has any real power is going to want to reign in the NSA. Politicians don't want to take anything like this back. If you're the one who does, and then an attack does happen, then regardless of whether or not it would have been prevented you're pretty much handing the next election to your opponent, who will claim that the attack was your fault because you were too soft.
If you were a sociopath and cared only about your career rather than doing what's right (as a politician generally is by the time they get elected to an office where they have any real power), would you make a decision at work that had a finite chance of completely ruining your career?
1. Re:I doesn't matter by SteveFoerster · 2013-12-20 08:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not to be all conspiratorial, but I think it's been a while now since politicians were really in charge of this sort of thing.
  
  --
  Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
2. Re:I doesn't matter by bob_super · 2013-12-20 08:50 · Score: 2
  
  > you're pretty much handing the next election to your opponent, who will claim that the attack was your fault because you were too soft.
  I'd like you now to direct your attention to all the European countries previous victims of terrorism, and how their populations have typically understood that leaving the door slightly open to an attack was the price to pay, for their taxes going to more useful things than spying on everyone.
  The overreaction of the US, the terrorist paranoia down to the last moldy shack in the Bayou, has really amazed those people who hadn't lived in denial of the rest of the world since they were born.
3. Re:I doesn't matter by the_scoots · 2013-12-20 09:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Not to be all conspiratorial, but I think it's been a while now since politicians were really in charge of this sort of thing.
  Agreed. I would add, I doubt that anyone who's done the things you have to do to get elected at the national level wants to cross the folks that have access to potentially EVERY electronic piece of information generated by them, their family and staff in the last decade plus. Don't think for a minute that if someone like Feinstein got critical of their programs, some shady business dealings of her husband's or his associates wouldn't get laundered to FBI or others.
4. Re:I doesn't matter by bonehead · 2013-12-20 10:07 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Not to put too fine a point on it, but I find it interesting that so many are willing to sacrifice MY freedom in the interests of THEIR (illusion of) safety, then the safest (real safety) place I can think of would probably be an isolation cell inside a SuperMax prison. Barring any suicidal tendencies, you'd be pretty damn safe sitting in one of those rooms.
  Maybe we just need to divert some tax dollars to building "safe facilities" for the cowards who think they need to be protected from all of the dangers their imaginations cook up.
Zero-day attacks by DocSavage64109 · 2013-12-20 08:37 · Score: 4, Funny

Apparently I'm the only one to think they were taking credit for stopping zero-day malware attacks.
1. Re:Zero-day attacks by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2013-12-20 09:06 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Apparently I'm the only one to think they were taking credit for stopping zero-day malware attacks.
  Don't be silly!
  The NSA creates zero-day malware attacks.
  
  --
  When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Re:It's about money by DocSavage64109 · 2013-12-20 08:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

I figure the current NSA is just a result of some capitalists making it rich via contracts to the military-industrial complex.
Let's take them at their word, and count bodies by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2013-12-20 08:41 · Score: 5, Interesting

Let's take them at their word and say that they did manage to stop 50 attacks. So that works out to about 4 attacks per year for the past 12 years. I will even give them the benefit that every attack would have killed as many people as the 9/11 attack. So that would give us somewhere around 13,000 people per year that would have been killed by these attacks. So without their violation of our rights terrorism would rank behind drug abuse and we don't seem to care that much about drug abuse. Even if all 50 attacks happened this year and each one killed ~3000 people the body count would only be 150,000 and terrorism would come in at #2 between being a fat ass and being a smoker.

Now in reality the number of attacks is probably much lower than the 50 they claim, and I would be willing to bet that at most a few dozen people would be killed in the most devastating of these attacks. So as others have pointed out before why are we wasting so much money and violating everyone's rights for something that is little more than a statistical anomaly.

--
Time to offend someone
1. Re:Let's take them at their word, and count bodies by deconfliction · 2013-12-20 08:55 · Score: 2
  
  So as others have pointed out before why are we wasting so much money and violating everyone's rights for something that is little more than a statistical anomaly.
  To be blunt- it is to help the rich and powerful to gain more money and power at the expense of the exploited powerless. With their current systems in place, they better and better entrench themselves in power. Using basically the same vertzezung style methods employed by the east german stasi. Everything else is the usual windowdressing of common authoritarianism. In other words, expounding on threat models that don't stand up to 'doing the math' as you took the effort to do. Thank you for your comment. I've got too much bloodlust against the ratfuckers to be willing to spend time on the numbers and data as you did.
2. Re:Let's take them at their word, and count bodies by deconfliction · 2013-12-20 11:51 · Score: 2
  
  since I misspelled "zersetzung" so badly, I'll take the opportunity to correct that, and spam the current wikipedia quote-
  "
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi -
  "
  Zersetzung
  This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2012)
  The Stasi perfected the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies known as Zersetzung (pronounced [z]) – a term borrowed from chemistry which literally means "decomposition".
  By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.
  Tactics employed under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim's private or family life. This often included psychological attacks such as breaking into homes and messing with the contents – moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls or replacing one variety of tea with another. Other practices included property damage, sabotage of cars, purposely incorrect medical treatment, smear campaigns including sending falsified compromising photos or documents to the victim's family, denunciation, provocation, psychological warfare, psychological subversion, wiretapping, bugging, mysterious phone calls or unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a vibrator to a target's wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide could result.
  One great advantage of the harassment perpetrated under Zersetzung was that its subtle nature meant that it was able to be plausibly denied. That was important given that the GDR was trying to improve its international standing during the 1970s and 80s, especially in conjunction with the Ostpolitik of West-German chancellor Willy Brandt massively improving relations between the two German states.
  Zersetzung techniques have since been adopted by other security agencies, particularly the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).[28]
perhaps the NSA suppilied the info for this hero by clovis · 2013-12-20 08:43 · Score: 2

This is how the terror attacks were stopped:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6nW7XvTYn0
Re:Of course it didn't. by cayenne8 · 2013-12-20 08:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm really curious what other US citizen could directly and provably lie to congress, and not be arrested and indited for it, like J. Clapper?
Why has he not gotten in trouble legally yet?

--
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Most surprising. by MRe_nl · 2013-12-20 08:53 · Score: 4, Funny

I didn't know people still flew Zero's.

--
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
let's not be so pessimistic by Trepidity · 2013-12-20 08:58 · Score: 5, Funny

Another way of phrasing this is that the NSA's metadata collection program, while admittedly not perfect, has met or exceeded the benchmarks set by peer agencies, such as the TSA.

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What the hell's a "Zero Attack"? by tippe · 2013-12-20 09:00 · Score: 3, Funny

That sounds scary as shit. Sounds like something Magneto would do. I don't know about you guys, but I'm sure glad the NSA is on my side. Keep up the good work, boys!
Re:Of course it didn't. by hawguy · 2013-12-20 09:12 · Score: 2

But we will never know for sure unless we continue.
They should use the TSA's mantra: "Well yeah, we haven't really directly stopped any serious attacks, but we've undoubtedly deterred many attacks because the terrorists know they can't get past our security defenses (unless of course, they exploit one of the many weaknesses in airport security that aren't solved by groping children)"
The NSA can say the same "Well, by knowing that we're out there, many terrorists have just given up their plans and went to work at homeless shelters"
Nearly one? by iamriley · 2013-12-20 09:14 · Score: 3, Funny

Interviewer: Now tell me, what exactly are you doing?
Spotter: Er well, I'm camel spotting. I'm spotting to see if there are any camels that I can spot, and put them down in my camel spotting book.
Interviewer: Good. And how many camels have you spotted so far?
Spotter: Oh, well so far Peter, up to the present moment, I've spotted nearly, ooh, nearly one.
Interviewer: Nearly one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RexQLrcqwc

--
If you can read this, then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously".
Mod parent down. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-20 09:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

These programs caught no one. Until full analyses of the cases have been released, by no stretch of the imagination can you say that anyone was "caught." The best that the government "ABC/XYZ" organizations can do is entrap old, stupid people and paranoid schizophrenics whom they give the "bomb material" to. Don't give credit where it is not deserved, shill.
1. Re:Mod parent down. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-20 09:39 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Shill? All I did was regurgitate the article. You missed the 'apparently'. Which in my terms means maybe they did maybe the didnt. Personally I think they didnt... But it matters not one iota what I think.
  However, you want to treat it emotionally. I want to know what they really did or didnt do. Unfortunately they are a secret org only beholden to a secret committee in congress and a secret court and a secret guy in the employe of the president. So getting any sort of what they did out of them is quite the job. At this point it is a good amount of speculation. With the known things Snowden has said.
  These programs caught no one. Until full analyses of the cases have been released, by no stretch of the imagination can you say that anyone was "caught."
  You and I are on the same page... I however can only go by what each side is saying. One side says they caught 50. You say 0 period. They have now come back and said 'wellll 50 but overseas'. Rightfully your bullshitometer is going off at this point. Mine as well.
Re:Of course it didn't. by radarskiy · 2013-12-20 09:19 · Score: 2

Oliver North, though he was arrested and indicted for other things.
NSA logic at its best by mveloso · 2013-12-20 10:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

Program A was never designed to do B
Program A was designed to do C, which could help in B
So by saying that A didn't help B is incorrect. C didn't do B. A helped C as designed.
This sort of retarded logic is all too common when technical people try and justify their failure.
The program as a whole hasn't worked. The metadata collection is part of the program, and it may be doing great - but it's value is basically 0, because the program's value is 0.
Of course we've spent billions of dollars on it with no real return. So there's that. It's kept a bunch of storage companies alive.
RSA is complicit by PopeRatzo · 2013-12-20 10:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

Wait 'til you hear the one about RSA taking $10million from the NSA to promote vulnerable security.
This is much much worse than many of us will admit. Despite all the other problems we face, this is the one that has to be tackled first. If we can't bring the out-of-control surveillance state to heel, nothing else can ever get really better.
And don't buy for a second the Obama Administration's press release about their "reforms" of NSA data collection. They're just trying to head off the serious challenges that are about to start coming down from the courts and from congress.
For a minute, I think we're going to have to put partisan politics aside to tackle this common threat: government surveillance.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:Of course it didn't. by Zumbs · 2013-12-20 10:47 · Score: 2

Seriously? Out of curiosity, can you provide some sources for that? Not because I'm doubting you, but because I'd like to dig a bit further ...

--
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
Wrong by gmuslera · 2013-12-20 11:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

The NSA metadata collection (and related programs, like weakening crypto) is the attack. The damage done to the country is something that will become even more evident in the next months/years.
Re:Of course it didn't. by geoskd · 2013-12-20 11:22 · Score: 2

Why hasn't he gotten in trouble legally? Probably because Congress had already been informed of the truth, and Wyden asked a highly inappropriate question in an inappropriate place as a form of grandstanding.
Wyden’s Stunt Was Congress at its Worst
The question Wyden asked is only inappropriate if the programs Clapper was being asked about should have legitimately been classified. If the programs themselves are being protected under the national security act inappropriately, then there is no issue. The simple fact is that one of two things is at play here, and the courts /congress will likely have to sort it out in the weeks and months to come.
Option 1: The national security act did in fact allow for the programs which clapper was asked to speak about, in which case, clapper was prohibited, by law from speaking about it. In that case, the national security act itself is demonstrably unconstitutional, and needs to be / hopefully will be struck down as such.
Option 2: (the more likely option) The NSA's programs extended beyond the authority granted by the national security act, and as such, no national security protections should have been afforded to Wydens questioning. Under this scenario, there is no question that Clappers responsibility was to fully disclose the programs in accordance with the will of congress, although, ironically, it may have been in Clappers best interests to plead the fifth... All in all, Clappers choice to lie to congress was about the dumbest thing he could have chosen to do, but it is in keeping with an agency that believes itself to be above congress, above the law, and most dangerously, above the constitution of the United States of America.

--
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted