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Declassified Report From 2009 Questions Effectiveness of NSA Spying
schwit1 writes: With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program code-named Stellarwind, which collected information on Americans' calls and emails. The report was from the inspectors general of various intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers "had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the [the surveillance system] to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts."
"The report said that the secrecy surrounding the program made it less useful. Very few working-level C.I.A. analysts were told about it. ... Another part of the newly disclosed report provides an explanation for a change in F.B.I. rules during the Bush administration. Previously, F.B.I. agents had only two types of cases: "preliminary" and "full" investigations. But the Bush administration created a third, lower-level type called an "assessment." This development, it turns out, was a result of Stellarwind.
They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers "had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the [the surveillance system] to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts."
"The report said that the secrecy surrounding the program made it less useful. Very few working-level C.I.A. analysts were told about it. ... Another part of the newly disclosed report provides an explanation for a change in F.B.I. rules during the Bush administration. Previously, F.B.I. agents had only two types of cases: "preliminary" and "full" investigations. But the Bush administration created a third, lower-level type called an "assessment." This development, it turns out, was a result of Stellarwind.
1) Tell us that it is not effective; thus we need not worry about loss of privacy; thus we might we well let them continue ?
2) It is not effective because they have not got enough money for XXX; so: please Mr congress critter - vote them some more money
3) It is not effective; you need not worry about encrypting your communications; hopefully enough idiots will believe that!
Pick one of the above or come out with more suggestions.
Perhaps you should read it:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/25/us/25stellarwind-ig-report.html
It says Stellawind was illegal. That they knew it was illegal. That the FBI hid the details using a team '10' to scrub any mention of it, that the judges were misled, that Gonzales misled Congress, that it didn't work, that they misused NSLs, field officers said the info was garbage, their tests showed the results of random fishing were totally worthless, Yoo suggests Ashcroft hide it from [redacted] (likely Congress or the courts),
NYT even highlighted the meat of the report. Yet you spin it, perhaps hoping nobody will actually follow the link?
You datamine noise, the 'signal' you get is the portion of noise that maps your chosen filter. It's garbage and in the process you implement a mass surveillance system that threatens the core democracy.
http://video.pbs.org/video/236... The recent Frontline documentary "American Terrorist" (which investigates American-born David Coleman Headley and his involvement in the Mumbai assault and the thwarted attack on a Danish newspaper) seemed to reach a similar conclusion. It was originally touted as an NSA bulk data collection success story by high level officials, but they had to backpedal as the truth emerged.
The conclusion seems to be that while they are able to collect a vast amount of information, they are unable to process and analyze all of the information gathered and connect it to individuals that warrant investigation. And Headley was extremely messy in many situations (e.g. directly contacting wanted terrorist leaders) where others certainly are not--so messy that my confidence in the NSA's abilities has diminished (this is assuming bulk data collection is a good thing to begin with, and I don't think it is). The data collected mainly became useful *after* an incident rather than being used to thwart an attack.
Perhaps things have changed by now as this is an investigation of something that happened several years ago, but I highly recommend the documentary.