"Despite its success in tests, ThinThread's information-sorting system was viewed by some in the agency as a competitor to Trailblazer, a $1.2 billion program that was being developed with similar goals. The NSA was committed to Trailblazer, which later ran into trouble and has been essentially abandoned."
Well, anyone remember another report that came out around 2000 - interception capabilities 2000, the report to the Director General for Research of the European Parliament on "the development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information." http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/inte rception_capabilities_2000.htm
A very informative report on the state of USA COMINT surveillance capabilities and operations around 2000. It briefly touches on the potential for the unlawful use of this calibre of surveillance information in an economic context to give unfair competitive advantage to US corporate interests.
It also mentions an piece of NSA comint surveillance software called Trailmapper, including screenshots of it and another program... (Actually the report has many pretty pictures...)
I always thought COMINT and the NSA in general were only supposed to direct these surveillance capabilities at communications where at least one of the parties is located internationally. In theory anyway. I could be wrong. If it did exist that limitation does certainly seem to have been removed since this reports publication.
Perhaps Trailblazer and Trailmapper are the same program, and that the name was ever so slightly redacted in one version.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, just realized its the same article with a different headline depending on whether its viewed from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-n sa517,0,5970724.story?page=1&coll=bal-home-headlin es
"killed" or http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.nsa18may18,0,2392814.story "rejected". My bad.
In the baltimore sun version of this article at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.nsa18may18,0,2392814.story
they mention that Thinthread was rejected in favor of another program called TrailBlazer around 1999 or 2000, quote:
e rception_capabilities_2000.htm
"Despite its success in tests, ThinThread's information-sorting system was viewed by some in the agency as a competitor to Trailblazer, a $1.2 billion program that was being developed with similar goals. The NSA was committed to Trailblazer, which later ran into trouble and has been essentially abandoned."
Well, anyone remember another report that came out around 2000 - interception capabilities 2000, the report to the Director General for Research of the European Parliament on "the development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information." http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/int
A very informative report on the state of USA COMINT surveillance capabilities and operations around 2000. It briefly touches on the potential for the unlawful use of this calibre of surveillance information in an economic context to give unfair competitive advantage to US corporate interests.
It also mentions an piece of NSA comint surveillance software called Trailmapper, including screenshots of it and another program... (Actually the report has many pretty pictures...)
I always thought COMINT and the NSA in general were only supposed to direct these surveillance capabilities at communications where at least one of the parties is located internationally. In theory anyway. I could be wrong. If it did exist that limitation does certainly seem to have been removed since this reports publication.
Perhaps Trailblazer and Trailmapper are the same program, and that the name was ever so slightly redacted in one version.