One thing, though: there sure are a helluva lot of intelligence agents squawking to the press these days, aren't there? Does that strike anybody else as a little odd?

It's like I've been saying for a while: Until the press can give names and positions of those who are passing along this information, we have no reason to think it's true. The sources could be giving selective information, could be misinformed, or could simply be products of the "reporter's" imagination.

The only named source in the article is this:

"Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to discuss actual or alleged operational issues as it would give those wishing to do harm to the U.S. insight and potentially place Americans in danger," said NSA spokesman Don Weber in a statement to The Sun

"However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities very seriously and operates within the law."

So, all we know is that the NSA takes its responsibilities seriously and operates within the law. Everything else is conjecture from anonymous sources.

It was similar to the call monitoring program that USA Today disclosed last week, but the idea was to make it scrupulously legal by encrypting all the phone number data before it got to analysts. They'd run their software on the encrypted data, and only if they found something worth following up would they get a warrant to decrypt the data. This supposedly ensured the privacy of the data they collected.

Could someone point to the provision of the law that indicates that such encryption would render the process "scrupulously legal"?

Its illegal for the telcos to give the data out period. Its illegal for government officers to conspire in or solicit an unlawful act. Having the illegally solicited and illegally provided data recoded before handing it off to analysts to work with, discover patterns from, etc., doesn't, AFAICT, remotely make it legal.

It might make it more politically salable, but that's not at all the same thing.

Cmdicely: Well, that was the idea, anyway. And it certainly sounds like an improvement. Whether it really is legal or not, I don't know.

Sources say the NSA's existing system for data-sorting has produced a database clogged with corrupted and useless information
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since most faxes contain text, the development of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software made it possible for them to electronically scan high volumes of faxes [Business Dweebs] for "trigger words." Even though the infant OCR technology was far from accurate, if it only found one fax in a hundred that contained trigger words, analysts would still be unable to keep up. But, the difference was, that now they were now reading faxes that they already knew contained trigger words. As we all know, OCR software is now capable of highly accurate, fully automatic scanning of just about every font and language on earth.

But the Digital Age had, yet another, even greater windfall on the horizon for the spies at ECHELON. Voice Recognition! This technology was probably the single most beneficial development in the history of ECHELON. In the early days of Voice Recognition, enormous computers were required for this purpose. But, computers only cost money and the NSA had plenty of that. The NSA realized that the more people who know a secret, the harder it is to keep that secret. So, if computers could reduce their dependence upon manpower, NSA got computers. As with OCR, early Voice Recognition software was far from accurate. But, again, if it was able to identify only one suspect phone call out of a hundred, it would make each analyst's work much more productive. And, as with OCR, we know that Voice Recognition software has become so highly accurate that it is now used every day on millions of desktop computers as a normal part of business.

While all of this was going on, the proliferation of a new communication medium called the Internet and an associated technology called email must have made the spies at ECHELON completely giddy at the thought of how much easier their work would be. In fact, the Internet will probably soon surpass Voice Recognition as the most beneficial development in the history of ECHELON. The reason is quite simple. The information that travels over the Internet is already digitized. There is no need for Voice Recognition or OCR software to interpret the communication into a digital format. This means a tremendous savings in time, computer power and most of all a 100% accuracy rate (after running it through a spell checker.)

Now, with fully automated systems sorting through all of the intercepted communications, ECHELON analysts are able to concentrate only upon that traffic that contains trigger words. In fact, the NSA now holds a patent (US Patent #5,937,422)
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/990810-nsa-patent.htm
PAT on a technology that will determine the "subject" of a communication without relying upon trigger words. Now you can be put on a watch list for something that you didn't say.

For the first time since 1947, they are actually able to keep up with all of the international traffic that they are intercepting. In fact, due to the proliferation of microwave communications and advanced telephone switching systems, they are now also receiving an equally large volume of domestic traffic, which leaks from inside and is routinely analyzed as well. Now they can't act on this intercepted domestic info directly. But, once they know where to look, they can arrange for one of their partner nations to look for further related information and report it too them. In fact, due to the reduced international workload, it appears that the spies at ECHELON are devoting a significant amount of their energies to monitoring domestic communications.
And we also have monkey boy to contend with now.

Even this bleeding heart liberal would accept the ThinThread program as necessary, though some oversight from an agency other than from the Executive would even then be essential. Shame on them for not using it.

The method of claim 1, wherein said step of assigning a definition-word score to each definition word in each tree structure is comprised of assigning a definition-word score to each definition Do you understand the WORDS coming outta MY MOUTH American Chicken Hawk!
Shet u, jest shet up allready. Damn.
Act like you know sumthin...sweet bahjeebus lordy help the weak.

A.sub.i,t ›j!=W(.beta..sub.j,t).SIGMA.A.sub.i,t-1 ›k!R.sub.k,j, where R.sub.i,j =D.sub.j /.SIGMA.D.sub.k), where .SIGMA.D.sub.k represents the sum of the dictionary saliences of the words in the definition of word w.sub.i, where D.sub.j =.beta..sub.j (S.sub.j log(d.sub.m /.DELTA..sub.j)) 0.5, where .DELTA..sub.j =max(d.sub.j, .epsilon.), and d.sub.m is chosen such that a fixed percentage of the observed values of the d.sub.j 's are larger than d.sub.m.

More like American YardBird.

So, all we know is that the NSA takes its responsibilities seriously and operates within the law. Everything else is conjecture from anonymous sources.

Posted by: American Hawk on May 18, 2006 at 1:57 AM | PERMALINK

Hmm. I thought all we knew is that US intelligence have often shown themselves not to be so and always try to operate beyond the law. Everything else is conjecture.

Sounds to me like some folks, some very interested and influential folks, wanted this program without the safeguards. The sloppier the better.

If you have access to the raw data and then encrypt within one organization, you still have the date and the code. There is no firewall!

Basically (as I have said), US intelligence is getting F'dUp by bureaucracy just like Homeland/FEMA.

Should the NSA even be involved in domestic intelligence? Isn't this FBI territory? There are big power grabs going on by DoD. That is why Hayden is probably not a good idea.

you still have the date and the code = data and the code (you can decrypt).

Having all that data in itself is very much "big brother", more so if you include all internet and cell positioning too

The intel community has been mighty pissed at the administration for quite some time. Now the Goss has been "resigned", they can finally speak to the public about the real situation.

The nonsense that has been going on is too much.

Maybe they are trying to tell us something about how affective these programs really are(n't).

I have a couple of dumb questions: How does one analyze encrypted data? Or did they encrypt just one party to the phone call? If they found an interesting pattern with an encrypted phone, would it not have been illegal to then unencrypt the number? If so, what is the point? The other dumb question is, what the heck is so great about these intelligence experts who are running to the media? When was the last time the CIA got something major right? Was it when they missed the collapse of the USSR? Was it when Tenet told Bush that it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had WMD? What is the answer to Cheney's question about why they sent an ambassador instead of an intel agent to Niger? Isn't it time to terminate the CIA and its boated useless budget? Maybe Bush should start reading the newspapers.

Who watches the watchers?

imbo: How does one analyze encrypted data? Or did they encrypt just one party to the phone call? If they found an interesting pattern with an encrypted phone, would it not have been illegal to then unencrypt the number?

If the encryption uses the same key, and the scope of the data that is encrypted is the same, then pattern analysis is as valid as using "real" or unencrypted data--the "encryption" in such a case amounts to no more than a simple substitution cipher using a very large symbol space. (E.g., a phone number or email address is one symbol.) The same techniques are used by banks for test validation, without giving testers access to real data.

Is that sufficient to protect individual privacy? Probably, but there are plenty of gotcha's. For example, for call pattern analysis to be valid on a national basis, such an approach would require: (1) that all the telco's agree on the encryption (aka, substitution dictionary) before handing the data to the NSA; or (2) would require that the telco's hand over the data to a third party to maintain the encryption/substitution dictionary independent of the NSA; or (3) hand over the data in the clear to the NSA, which would presumably maintain the substiution dictionary and internal firewalls to prevent leakage.

In any case, all approaches clearly break the law, or tread perilously close.

It all sounds like a good reason to start writing letters again and throw away your phone and computer...

Since my wife and I are celebrating our 15th anniversary today, it must be time to say: Happy 15th anniversary, Kevin and Marian!

I think it's also Matt Yglesias' 25th birthday.

Ah, Kevin

OT: Well, here's Thursday upon us, and nothing in the papers about Rove's indictment. Maybe they buried it on pg 34? Nope, not there.

I'll tell you why you're being irresponsible with your prognositications: there's not a grain of truth to it, but through the power of suggestion your planting the idea in people's heads that it is true.

ah egbert,
zzzzzz

AMERICAN HAWK: The sources could be giving selective information, could be misinformed, or could simply be products of the "reporter's" imagination.

DON WEBER [NSA Spokesman]: However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities very seriously and operates within the law.

AMERICAN HAWK: So, all we know is that the NSA takes its responsibilities seriously and operates within the law. Everything else is conjecture from anonymous sources.

How is it that the reporter, whom you surround with mocking quotes, is dismissed as unreliable and even laid open to suspicion of lying, while the government spokesman, dispensing standard government posturing, is taken at his word?

I'll take a stab at this one, jayarbee: Because such intellectually dishonest mental gymnastics are the only thing that protects the Bush Cultists from cognitive dissonance?

But I suspect you knew that already.

Does it bother anybody that a guy who looks like Elmer Fudd is making security decisions? Or is that just par for the course for this administration at this point. . .

Does it bother anybody that a guy who looks like Elmer Fudd is making security decisions? Or is that just par for the course for this administration at this point. . .

No, but it bothers me that a bunch of people who can't shoot any straighter than Elmer Fudd are making our security decisions.

I predict that one of the legacies of the Bush II Administration will be the destruction of the myth of Republican competence in national security for a generation.

"One thing, though: there sure are a helluva lot of intelligence agents squawking to the press these days, aren't there? Does that strike anybody else as a little odd?"

Let's see now: Agents talking to reporters about programs which can trap data when agents talk to reporters.

Makes perfect sense. They're debugging the programs.

Or will.

I assume that Kevin was kidding with this question: "One thing, though: there sure are a helluva lot of intelligence agents squawking to the press these days, aren't there? Does that strike anybody else as a little odd?

The administration has more or less ripped apart the US intelligence services and humilated analysts who tried to communicate what the real scoop was. They have repeatedly blames "bad intelligence" for a raft of horrendous policy mis-calls - most of which really seem to be mistaken calls by policy makers. And of course, they've put a few people in charge who have reputations as being incompetent jerks in charge: Rumsfeld, Goss, etc.

Of course the intelligence analysts are furious.

And of course they can't go public. What planet does American Hawk pretend to live on? You want to publicly call out your boss and get fired the next day? How many people really are going to do that?

And on what basis can anyone of us possibly assert this claptrap: "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities very seriously and operates within the law."?

Lastly, let us not forget the moral angle to all of this: Negroponte organized death squads in Central America in the 1980s. He seems to have done the same in Iraq. CIA agents have been fingered by almost everyone in the rest of the world for running torture chambers. Do you think most analysts like that? Do you think that they want to be part of a group of torturers?

So there you have it, 4 big reasons why CIA and other intelligence analysts are furious: morals, jerk bosses, being scapegoated and being crippled.

Who watches the watchers?

I'll do it. Hire me for that job. I stand behind them with a FN/FAL pinned to the back of their heads and the instant one strays from the straight and narrow path of NO domestic spying, BOOM, brains all over their computer monitors.

I'll take a sick pleasure in blowing their anti-Constitution, anti-Bill of Rights, anti-American, anti-democracy, anti-freedom brains all over Timbuktu and back.

Hire me for that job.

The left have found themselves the perfect argument against all of which they disagree with (or do not want to admit to).

"They Lied".

Many of you may remember this argument from 2nd grade recess or from the teen years in which one may have been trying to duck responsibility. Nevertheless, it's a pity the left can not form a more mature argument or at least admit when they really haven't any coherent counter argument.

Praedor takes an early lead in todays drama queen award contest. Well done praedor.

One thing, though: there sure are a helluva lot of intelligence agents squawking to the press these days, aren't there? Does that strike anybody else as a little odd?

The country is being betrayed by its leadership; some people think that this is bad for the country and its citizens.

Nothing odd about that at all.

The only thing odd is why it took them so long to figure out that Bush was leading the country down the road to the same type of incompetent and corrupt totalitarianism that existed in the old Soviet Union.

Jay: The left have found themselves the perfect argument against all of which they disagree with (or do not want to admit to).

We learned from the best, conservatives who opposed Clinton and used the same tactics.

Only problem for you is, it didn't work against Clinton, but it is working wonderfully against Bush.

Approval rating for Bush 30%.

Clinton's lowest second term approval rating: somewhere around 53%

A 23-point difference.

I. LOVE. IT!

And, btw, if the liar shoe fits, then you got to wear it Jay, and it looks gooooood on you!

Jay: "They Lied".

The truth hurts.

Conservatives that is.

Poor, poor, Jay.

Hitched his horse to the wrong wagon and now is so, so desperate to spin reality to prove it ain't so.

LOL.

Liar shoes? Is this one step lower than snakeskin boots? The only thing lower than a snake is a Bushco Apologista.

This could have used hash functions to protect identities.

This is a good reference on how that could be done by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Translucent databases are also worth reading about.

American Hawk: It's like I've been saying for a while: Until the press can give names and positions of those who are passing along this information, we have no reason to think it's true.

Funny how that standard didn't apply to the Bush administration when it was claiming Iraq was a threat.

Or for that matter during the Clinton adminsitration when conservatives hysterically claimed all sorts of bizarro conspiracies based on anonymous sources.

Once again we see the hypocrisy and double-standard of the Right.

Your just a racist apologist hack for the DNC advocate, nobody takes you seriously. Oh and a liar too.

btw, if you looked at the poll numbers broken down by party, 62% of republicans support the administration. That represents a huge number of conservative people (the base). I would think that you guys would have learned to have been a bit skeptical on poll numbers anyhow considering your embarassment in '04. But I guess your lack of will to learn from past mistakes is our benefit. Carry on.

Jay: . . . 62% of republicans support the administration.

Hmmmm.

Down from 80%.

Not so huge as it used to be, even assuming "huge" is an appropriate term in this instance.

Good point, Jay.

You've just got to be a liberal parodying a conservative in order to generate hostility against the Right through posts designed to convince readers that conservatives are dopey, incoherent, and hysterical, dare I say it, moonbats.

Good job!

Keep up the good work.

if you looked at the poll numbers broken down by party, 62% of republicans support the administration. That represents a huge number of conservative people (the base).

I wouldn't crow, Jay. Leaving aside the embarrassing drop in Republican support that figure represents, it also means that 38% of Republicans don't support the Administration. That represents a huge number of conservative people (the base). It spell big trouble for this Administration, and makes the desperate whinging of you Bush Cultists all the more sadly amusing.

The program the NSA uses, as described, is all but completely useless. The dataset they use can't help but defeat analysis due to its size: they'll get so many false positives of "interesting" correlations that subsequent inspection by a human analyst will of necessity have to be cursory. There simply aren't enough analysts and there's never enough time. Since the invention of cell phones even pulp writers assumed that Bad Guys never used their phones more than a few times before disposing of them. The NSA has always been assumed to be listening in on cells.

This is an expensive, illegal boondoggle from an Admin apparently keen to set unbreakable records in illegal boondoggery.

What's most heartbreaking here is that 9/11 would have been preventable under our pre 9/11 rules if the warning signs had been heeded. It wasn't a failure of technique. It was a failure of imagination and wisdom.

Four posts on illegal immigration and four on the NSA phone call collections program and zero on Iraq out of the last 15, Kevin.

I guess Bush and the GOP have successfully turned attention away from their fiasco in Iraq.

Check out Kleiman's latest on Iraq from MS-NBC to see how real this issue remains and how much more attention it continues to require.

That represents a huge number of conservative people (the base).

To be fair to Jay, Gregory, the base is standing firm despite all their harrumphing. It's everyone else who's deserting.

from Ruy Texeira
According to the Gallup Poll, the recent decline in support for President Bush among Republicans has occurred almost entirely among moderate-to-liberal Republicans. The President’s approval rating among conservative Republicans has barely declined at all—going from 79 percent on April 28-30 to 77 percent on May 8-11. During the same period, however, the President’s approval rating among moderate-to-liberal Republicans fell from 65 percent to only 45 percent.

Any placating of the base now is just adding to disaster.

btw, I can't think of anything more appropriate than having Jay comment in something called "ThinThread."

From Talking Points Memo and Josh Marshall: The FBI left Dusty Foggo's house with bank records, vacation pictures, and cuban cigars.

Now, tell me again why conservatives want desperately to prevent ordinary Americans from obtaining access to Cuba and Cuban products so much so that they will prosecute the most minor of offenses, but it takes an intelligence turf war to expose the illegal possession of Cuban products by one of their very own high officials.

I wonder how many other Bush administration officials are in possession of contraband from Cuba while they shamelessly parade around the country and demand a ban on those same Cuban products.

Sources say the NSA's existing system for data-sorting has produced a database clogged with corrupted and useless information.

I sure hope they mean their so-called 'results' database is corrupted. I mean the ultimate, number zero hard and fast rule for any of this is NEVER modify the source data. Slice and dice a copy of it all you want but make sure your source stays pure.

Here is a moral dilemma. Let's say that when you graduated college in the late 70s you steered clear of the defense industry (e.g. designing smart landmines) because of a vague moral distaste left over from Viet Nam. Instead you chose the safe but boring field of commercial software. Fast forward to, I dunno, 2006 and say one of the few plum assignments left (since all the software business work is moving to India for writing and China for testing) is on a government contract to do data filtering (nudge nudge wink wink).

Do you take the job?

To: siobhan.gorman@baltsun.etc
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 11:51 PM
Subject: Cong-rats
Interesting article.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-nsa517,0,5970724.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
I was reminded of this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Information_Awareness
and even this...
http://www.nex.com/innews.htm

Thanks for being a decent journalist - I'd almost given up on them! Your future would appear to hold great PROMIS and you should soon reach the upper ECHELON of yr chosen profession. END

Thanks Drum - the Pentagon is the gift that keeps on giving. The internet, Policy Analysis Markets and now this. An Ox for the people to ride.
We can have a translucent P2P database that respects the forth ammendment. Together we CAN do better. The netroot rebel alliance armed with this database and a fully loaded PAM can now destroy the death star. The last empire is in its last hours and so we fly at dawn. May the Fitz be with us!

"They Lied".

Many of you may remember this argument from 2nd grade recess or from the teen years...

Or from those inane impeachment hearings from those insane Republicans.

BaltSun: "The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work -- but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials."

In other words, Clinton was trying to protect us with an effective program and doing it legally, while Bush implements a highly ineffective program that invades personal privacy and violates the law.

The GOP is making a great case for why they can't be trusted with national security (or anything else): since conservatives are self-centered and self-serving, each conservative is ultimately focused on his own success at the expense of all other considerations including national security which results in illegal and ineffective shortcuts being implemented out of arrogance, fear of imposing on the egos of superiors, and an utter lack of concern for hard work and difficult choices that interfere with quick career rewards.

The character of conservatives to serve their own immediate interests (which is one reason why Bush invaded Iraq so quickly and unnecessarily) will always, always ensure that national security and the public interest will take the seat farthest back in the public policy bus.

Conservatives are looking out for themselves first, second, and third, and you citizens of America will be the last of the last of their concerns.

Pay heed.

Kevin, I loved your remark about infighting between programmers. I agree, the idea that Hayden killed ThinThread to prevent the "humiliation" of Trailblazer is exactly the sort of thing a programmer would say.

Meanwhile, the outsider says that ThinThread was killed due to legal fears. But, of course, it wasn't revived after 9/11, despite the claimed superiority.

Personally, I figure that the obnoxiousness of the programming team might have figured in to its death, too. Or the projected cost.

Hmm. Hayden got his third star on May 1, 1999, and his fourth on April 22, 2005. The article states that ThinThread did its tests in 1998. So that makes a careerist motive plausible. Maybe not with malice aforethought; just really heavy confirmation bias.

The President’s approval rating among conservative Republicans has barely declined at all—

If that's true, then clearly there is no such thing as a conservative Republican and conservatism is dead. A true conservative has absolutely no reason to approve of anything W has done in the past 5+ years.

To be fair to Jay, Gregory, the base is standing firm despite all their harrumphing. It's everyone else who's deserting.

But the Bush Misadministration, to say nothing of the Republican Party, can ill afford the disaffection of moderate Republicans. The more the failed policies of Bush and the Rubber Stamp Republicans are associated with the lunatics of the far right, the better the prospects for the Democrats in November.

Sources say the NSA's existing system for data-sorting has produced a database clogged with corrupted and useless information.

Have they tried praying over it?
.

Intell agents are spilling the beans because Bush/Cheney/Goss managed to destroy the agency's morale. It'll get worse.

I have a hard time understanding how this could be very useful since phone numbers don't tie to
a specific person. Presumably, a terrorist could move around and use different phones, phone numbers get reused when an account is closed, people can use public phones or work phones, borrowed cellphones, people open and close accounts, the numbers they called could change, etc. Sounds like it wouldn't take long before you would have a huge databse of useless information.

Besides, how easy would it be to open an account under a fake ID ?

Re: comment @ 11:17

Yes, the number of false positives has to be enormous. What they've described in public is a computer hardware vendor's relief project, not an intelligence operation. It's as if they decided to turn even surveillance into an opportunity to repay campaign contributors. With everything they do, their first question is "How Can We Make Money Doing This?"

there sure are a helluva lot of intelligence agents squawking to the press these days, aren't there? Does that strike anybody else as a little odd?

No. There is gigantic upheaval and an ongoing turf war in and around the various intelligence agencies. Nadezhda has a nice roundup of some of the issues.

People who know and care about this stuff see us going down some seriously blind alleys, and it should be clear to all that you don't get very far raising complaints inside this regime. Also, they see clearly that there's a chance, with the potential for a new look in Congress, for some real oversight and some real changes. So they're piping up. Very natural.

Stephen: I have a hard time understanding how this could be very useful . . .

Because this is not and has never been, at least as implemented by Bush, a program designed to ferret out terrorists so much as a program designed to ferret out people they can prosecute or arrest and hold indefinitely as terrorists so as to appear to be doing something about terrorism while serving their sadistic cravings and need to feel powerful.

If they can tie a series of data points to a phone number you currently use or have access to or used or had access to in the past, they can arrest you, hold you, maybe actually prosecute you, but certainly harass, intimidate, and defame you to their hearts content without any reasonable judicial oversight . . . they are simply, as some have alleged, Nazis, in the guise of loyal Americans, giving satisfaction to certain cravings arising from a feeling of superiority and entitlement to power.

It will be irrelevant whether you are guilty or not, just as it has been with the multitude of innocents they have imprisoned, tortured, and killed in their Global Whine on Terror and just as they have with alleged murderers whose execution they have demanded while fighting tooth and nail to prevent any real investigation into the actual innocence of many of these convicts.

Usefulness being irrelevant, there is nothing to understand viz usefulness.

Usefulness in the usual sense of that word, not usefulness in the sense of serving self-centered conservative needs.

Stephen,

Work phones are tied to a specific office. Public phones are tied to a specific location.

One way to track when someone has changed phone numbers is to look for the same calling pattern from a new number. If that happens frequently then it looks like the person is trying to evade detection.

Since most of the numbers remain stable over time I think you can target people changing numbers.

If they borrow someone's cellphone then you contact the cell phone owner and you've got someone who has actually seen the terrorist. You start watching him too.

In other words, conservatives would be perfectly happy with a governmental program that randomly pulled people off the street and executed them in a very public manner as long as:

1) they could hide the fact that the person was innocent;

2) the program gives them an opportunity to appear tough on crime;

3) the program targeted people they don't like anyway; and

4) the program would send a message, whether effective or not, that criminals will be punished (closely related to #2 above).

So, its about targeting political, social, economic, religious, or (perceived) racial enemies; sending messages; appearing tough on crime (or terrorism or drugs or X); and getting away with it.

Innocents in this game are just necessary and acceptable collateral damage serving the righteous (in their minds) and more important goal of furthering conservative political, social, economic, religious, and often racial hegemony.

Work phones are tied to a specific office.
But not a person.

Public phones are tied to a specific location.
But not a person.

One way to track when someone has changed phone numbers is to look for the same calling pattern from a new number.

If the destination number changes, how do you find the pattern ?

Since most of the numbers remain stable over time I think you can target people changing numbers.

I think you are being naive.

Al Qaeda isn't a centralized organization. The operatives aren't going to be placing regular calls to a central headquarters and there are other ways to communicate besides the phone.

If they borrow someone's cellphone then you contact the cell phone owner and you've got someone who has actually seen the terrorist. You start watching him too.

People steal cellphone numbers all the time. You don't need the actual cellphone to make it work.

I have a feeling all of this has didly squat to do with national security. Real bad guys know these systems exist and do not use and tapped infrastructure to communicate anything important. Even then they speak in their own code that can not be deciphered by computers. Every corner street dealer knows this.

More likely this started out as a way of finding out if AQ had any agents on the inside (which is not unlikely--I think the attacks demonstrate a high level knowledge about our intelligence agencies). It then morphed into a back end way of keeping tabs on political enemies. Its Watergate with new toys.

Stephen,

I think you are being a little disengenuous. Are you implying that 'terrorists' will sneak into people's offices to use their phones?

And you say people steal cellphone numbers all the time without stealing the phones themselves?

All the time?

I'm not supporting the NSA thing. I think it is criminal. But exagerating the potential problems with it doesn't help that case. One could argue that if nothing else forcing the terrorists to constantly change phones and locations would disrupt them to some extent.

"I agree, the idea that Hayden killed ThinThread to prevent the "humiliation" of Trailblazer is exactly the sort of thing a programmer would say."

Sounds like MBA speak to me.

Oh how I hate meetings with MBA's.

I think you are being a little disengenuous. Are you implying that 'terrorists' will sneak into people's offices to use their phones?

The PBX at my office was hacked and someone was able to make phone calls using the office phone system without physically being inside the office. And guess what, the police never caught
them.

And you say people steal cellphone numbers all the time without stealing the phones themselves?

Yes. Type "cell phone fraud" into Google and see what you come up with.

The point is: a phone number is not always tied to a specific person or location and it would be foolish to assume that terrorists are as technically illiterate as you appear to be.

If the destination number changes, how do you find the pattern ?

all the people who were calling the old number will suddenly stop calling that number and start calling the new number. and all the people who used to get calls from the old number will suddenly start getting calls from the new number. and this will all happen at roughly the same time.

Trailblazer wasn't killed, Kevin, as you'd know if you read me more often. It died of natural causes.

HTH. HAND.

"One thing, though: there sure are a helluva lot of intelligence agents squawking to the press these days, aren't there? Does that strike anybody else as a little odd?"

Not in the least. Most people at NSA grew up in the Agency with the ethic of We Do Not Spy On Americans as the Prime Directive. It's natural for many to be uncomfortable with this, just as many folks at other intel agencies are uncomfortable with a) being misused for political reasons; and b) misused by incompetents.

all the people who were calling the old number will suddenly stop calling that number and start calling the new number. and all the people who used to get calls from the old number will suddenly start getting calls from the new number. and this will all happen at roughly the same time.

And if the source numbers changed or are not fixed ? Remember, you are talking about sorting through millions of calls a day and there are two ends to each call.

I've been trying to analyze this from a professional perspective (yes, I do have datamining experience). I'm not coming up with a lot.

The pen registry data, combined with commercial databases, could tell you a WHOLE lot of things -- but picking out terrorists?

No. It's really the wrong sort of problem to be addressed in this fashion. (And no, social networking is useless -- or rather, you could do it JUST as well using FISA warrants. And it's easy defeated, both from datamining and warrant-based tapping, by simply having all members switch cellphones on a regular basis and leave the new numbers in a coded form on any internet forum).

Tripp: And you say people steal cellphone numbers all the time without stealing the phones themselves?

I can imagine the ability to copy SIM cards, reprogram SIM cards, or manufacture SIM cards with fraudulent phone numbers tied to them, which means you don't need to steal phones to cover up your identity or project it onto someone innocent.

I mean, if software pirates can duplicate DVDs and Microsoft Office applications and credit card thieves can do their things with blank credit cards and stolen pins, it seems like it would be technically feasible to compromise the SIM card system in order to mask your identity or steal someone else's phone identity.

Maybe not, I'm not a techie wizard, but that's my impressions.

I'll gladly stand corrected if someone will explain how this is not possible.

How about pre-paid cell phones ?

Morat20,

What can they use a database like that for?

lib, Even this bleeding heart liberal would accept the ThinThread program as necessary, though some oversight from an agency other than from the Executive would even then be essential

Could it be realistic to place the intelligence agencies within the judicial branch?

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anyone who wants to see a report given in 2000 with screenshots of the actual Trailblazer software, should look here:

http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/interception_capabilities_2000.htm

A Report to the Director General for Research of the European Parliament on the development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information.

A very informative report.