Re NSA, Do I have this right?

[hootinholler]

I've been mulling this over and need some feedback on what I've got rattling around in the old noggin.

FISA was passed to protect the rights of US citizens against illegal searches.

It's perfectly ok under US law for the NSA to record conversations between foriegn nationals.

When a US citizen is a party to a call, the NSA cannot record it unless it is covered by a FISA court warrant which can be obtained up to 72 hours after the call is recorded.

We do not and will not know the actual contents of the Presidential Order covering 'wiretaps'. In other words, we will not get the facts of the order directly because they are classified.

The P/O is complex enough for the Minority leader of the Intelligence Committee to be unable to render an opinion without His staff studying it, which was not allowed due to national security, and He wrote a letter to Bush saying how odious the implications of that and the order were.

Each issuance of the P/O was valid for a period of time, and was re-authorized every time it was about to expire since the first one in 2001, reportedly some 35 times.

By Bush's own words, this was not about monitoring calls between terrorists, but about detecting terrorists.

The P/O authorized something that the FISA Court would either refuse a warrant for, or was activity that either would not be authorized by FISA (and thus unconstitutional), or was explicitly illegal under FISA.

The actions of the NSA under the P/O was independant of other possibly illegal monitoring of US citizens, i.e. the FBI infiltration of peace activist groups, etc.

These things lead me to believe that the object of the order was not any individual communication, but, rather a dragnet of all communication looking for key words or names. Possibly to build a data store of those conversations that could be mined to obtain background once a target was identified, or new keywords could be searched as they are identified.

The use of the term wiretap by the press is pure spin, sounding much less offensive than recording every word of every communication that was intercepted for future reference.

We have circumstantial evidence that those within the administration used this data store in ways that were politically motivated rather than security motivated. i.e. Bolton's list that was identified but not disclosed during his stalled hearings about the UN ambassadorship.

-Hoot

[Vincardog]

1. not about monitoring calls between terrorists, but about detecting terror

A distinction without a difference. To TAP you have to show cause. To Detect you search everything. The thing aWoL most wants to detect are his rivals plans. Remember watergate? Nixon was detecting the Democrat's plans. That is exactly what prince george wants to do. We have to resist or die.

[hootinholler]

2. But legally speaking it's a huge difference.

As you point out when you define TAP. I'm trying to get my head around this so I can maintain coherence when I talk to others about it.

-Hoot

[Vincardog]

6. Here is the difference. FISA is FOREIGN. NSA has the authority

to investigate FOREIGN conversations. The boy george wants to search and 'detect' DOMESTIC local AMERICAN activities. SO? If you are not doing anything you have nothing to worry about RIGHT? Not if you are working against the FASCIST THUGS. They want to detect the opposition. They want to detect the enemy. They are paranoid MFkers and everybody who is not a KoolAid drinking strict conformist true believer is the enemy. I for one am proud to first in that legion.

[Rex]

3. The BFEE has no excuses, even after spying on Americans

they could receive a warrant 3 days after the recording event! The implications that the FISA court would not approve some warrants leads me to believe they were spying on the anti-war crowd. I put NOTHING past this regime.

[many a good man]

4. Don't overstate the problem

I agree with just about everything you say, but as someone who works every day with vast sums of data I feel its technologically impossible to accomplish the level of eavesdropping you are inferring.

I believe there is dragnetting, albeit at a higher level (and frankly I'm not too incensed by it). I believe the govt is capturing ALL metadata going through the system for telephone calls, messaging and email. It probably captures little more than source, destination, and duration.

There must be another source of intelligence that can provide a meaningful filter to the vast data collected. Once a source point or an endpoint of interest is found, ALL communication related to it can be captured and analyzed to a staggering degree. Its beyond any doubt that many innocent persons will be wrongly swept up.

I don't think the FISA court would have much a problem with the dragnet aspect; it is the follow-up against the individuals caught in this net that concerns them.

They are probably demanding the identities of all Americans that are tagged for the follow-up eavesdropping and this is what the Administration is refusing to hand over.

I bet we'll find that FISA has long ago OK'd the "dragnet" aspect. They are, however, insisting that the govt follow constitutional guidelines in the follow-through investigations. The Adminstration's deliberate refusal to adhere to this request is the thing that is at issue. Their secrecy, lies, and cover-up betrays their actions: they are grossly overstepping and spying on lots of people they shouldn't, including domestic political opponents.

[hootinholler]

7. I really don't think I overstated much.

as someone who works every day with vast sums of data I feel its technologically impossible to accomplish the level of eavesdropping you are inferring

As someone similarly employed, I don't think that I did overstate the current feasibility of this type of endeavor. Technologically speaking it becomes a question of efficiency. The business proposal would consider ROI, return on investment. There are numerous techniques to improve both of those considerations over brute-force methodology, behold Google.

Consider conceeding for a moment that the capacity to simply collect the traffic exists. I think that collection would in and of itself constitute a crime, and why I think the courts have a problem with the dragnet aspect. Perhaps some lawyers could chime in on that point?

Once the traffic was collected, the metadata alone would be a treasure trove. For those less technically challenged, metadata is data about data. In this case it would be who called whom, when, duration, etc. Then the distributions of that sort of data would be analized to identify the nodes in a network of individuals.

Once those communications were identified, they would be targeted for indexing. The targets would be selected by things like call distribution frequency, degrees of seperation, etc. Throw in some random traffic samples for good measure and now you only have to actually index a significantly smaller percentage of the raw data, I'm thinking on the order of 10%.

Plus as technology and methodology improve, the ability to retroactively process more selections increases. It also increases as more machines are brought into the processing network through acquisitions.

It's the retroactivitity component of the capability, coupled with the capacity of the neocons to order it, that I find scary.

-Hoot

[many a good man]

8. Two levels

I see two levels: 1) the metadata; and 2) the content. I believe it only possible to do rich analysis (the eavesdropping most people assume) on only a small carefully targeted portion of the traffic as identified by other means. The data stream is so enormous I believe we can only "eavesdrop" on a fraction of one percent due to technological (and human) limitations.

I think a FICA judge would permit, given heightened national security concerns, govt monitoring of "who called whom." They draw the line at monitoring the conversation.

The FICA judges are probably expecting a list of only a couple dozen funny sounding foreign names, but in reality NSA is snooping on tens of thousands of Americans.

[spindrifter]

5. I think you have most

of it right. I would not agree that FISA was passed to protect the rights of U.S. citizens, however. I think that is a wash to make it salable to Congress.

"These things lead me to believe that the object of the order was not any individual communication, but, rather a dragnet of all communication looking for key words or names. Possibly to build a data store of those conversations that could be mined to obtain background once a target was identified, or new keywords could be searched as they are identified."

This, I believe is the real key to all of this. The value is that having the information that comes through the dragnet is the technique for retrospectively justifying renditions and other activities of the BFEE.

[hootinholler]

9. evening kick