Wiretapping Millions Makes Terrorists Harder To Find?
Well, I wouldn’t pose the question if the answer was no.
It’d be one thing if the NSA’s massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it’s not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that “it’s a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free.”[…[
So I called Valdis Krebs, who’s considered by many to be the leading authority on social network analysis — the art and science of finding the important connections in a seemingly-impenetrable mass of data. His analysis of the social network surrounding the 9/11 hijackers is a classic in the field.
Here’s what Krebs had to say about the newly-revealed NSA program that aims to track “every call ever made”: “If you’re looking for a needle, making the haystack bigger is counterintuitive. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Certain people are more suspicious than others,” he adds. They make frequent trips back-and-forth to Afghanistan, for instance. “So you start with them. And you work two steps out. If none of those people are connected, you don’t have a cell. Because if one was there, you’d find some clustering. You don’t have to collect all the data in the world to do that.”
Now, there are other opinions on this, and the Defense Tech article has a couple. But those opinions advocate the “Google” method, which is getting everything. Yes…everything. Are we really ready for that?
Actually I am. Yes, let me say here and now, I’d love for all my communications to go through the magical terrorism catching machine. And while they’re at it, please, take a look at all my purchases and emails and blog posts. Of course, let’s put a few cameras in my house too. Just to make sure nothing untoward is going on. Oh, and let’s not forget the toilet cam. You never know what nefarious things are going down in the loo.
Because hey, if I don’t have anything to hide, why would I mind? Why would any of us? Don’t you want to catch the terrorists?
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7 Responses to “Wiretapping Millions Makes Terrorists Harder To Find?”
While I’m seriously doubtful, the NSA could be collecting this database to have instant and quick access to the data in the case where an element of a terrorist plot or cell is discovered, much as Valdis Krebs is suggesting is the optimal approach. That is, if one conspirator is discovered in an imminent plot scenario, potential co-conspirators could be quickly discovered, contained, and questioned before an attack, and before the full plot is understood. In this “ticking bomb” scenario, getting all of the necessary warrants and telco compliance could be too slow to thwart the execution of an attack. If the use of such a database was restricted to this scenario, would this be acceptable? I’m not sure, but any mining and trolling should be strictly prohibited.
If you have reason to believ an attack is imminent, you don’t need a warrant. That’s true of traditional policing as well. You might have justify yourself afterward, should the attack prove non-existent. You cannot willy-nilly go around and search without warrants.
Elrod,
Assuming you are responding to my comment:
I agree that willy-nilly searches (mining and trolling) are all bad. But to do an emergency “social network analysis” in an imminent attack situation with just one node known, the database would have to be at the ready. Even without warrants, the assemblege of the necessary data from telcos *could* take long enough to make such analysis ineffective.
OK. So what if the NSA paid the telcos to keep all their historical data, prepositioned all necessary analysis software at the telcos and at NSA installations, and had a court reviewable trigger for “emergency social network analysis” in the case of a terror related emergency; would this be acceptable?
The hyperbole is flying on both sides of this, I see. Nobody is “Wiretapping Millions”. These records aren’t wiretaps, they’re the equivalent of what you get on your phone bill every month telling you who you called and how long you spent connected. Also, the government wasn’t force anyone into giving the information, otherwise QWest wouldn’t have successfully refused. One point of contention for me, though, is whether they are putting names with these call records.
Also, I’m not sure what good all this info is going to do. I find myself leaning towards agreeing with Mr. Krebs. I’ll be interested in seeing how this plays out in Congress and the media.
One paragraph of the USAT article kinda slipped under the radar:
Feb 26/06, Meet the Press featured NYT’s James Risen and WaPo’s Robert O’Harrow, Jr. Specifically discussed was surveillance and the use of databases in intelligence gathering.
The video’s currently being hosted at BradBlog.
A transcript is available here.
Watch it; note that one of the companies noted is HAVA darling ChoicePoint; and remember that Hayden pointedly did not answer when asked if opponents of the Bush were being “targetted” (National Press Club, Jan. 23/06).
Brian,
Matching the names to numbers is easy. You can do it through Reverse White Pages on Yahoo.
I agree that this is much less bothersome than wiretapping. My biggest beef is actually that I think it’s counterproductive. The scenario that pqrynl lays out, where the NSA would conduct an “instant social network analysis” seems to border on “24″ fantasyland stuff. As I understand it, social network analysis can never be done “instantly”. The whole point is to track call patterns over time. If you identify a suspect just hours before a terrorist attack, a social network analysis won’t link you to another suspect any more than it will lead you to the same pizza parlor that the suspects may eat from in common.
There have been several updates to the DefenseTech post. “Social Network Analysis” is different than “Traffic Analysis”. The former is a much more complex task than the latter (the activity that NSA is claimed to be doing and which can be greatly automated.)