L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM> Former Director of NSA Bobby Inman said last week at a public session that NSA and the FBI seek very different information, that NSA is happy to get tiny fragments which would be useless to the FBI. He said digital communications was a godsend for NSA compared to analogue, for computers can process great amount of digital data that would remain obscure or unavailable if it was analogue. He emphasized that content of communications was not what NSA sought, instead it wanted data about patterns which would help focus attention on what content needed to be sought by FBI-like means. And huge volumes of pattern-rich data needed to be processed, indeed the larger the volume the better the possibility useful patterns could be determined. A few focussed calls such as the FBI seeks would not be helpful to establish patterns. That is why he said the FBI did not know what to do with the large number of leads provided to it by NSA, that the FBI was correct that the diverse range of tidbits had no meaning to them with the procedures for evidence gathering and prosecution to which they trained and for which they are regulated. Inman said NSA is focussed on warning of threat to the nation not crime-busting, and that for this reason the slightest of data can turn out to be important if it is correlated with other bits and pieces. And this requires capacity for gathering, analyzing, correlating and judgment-making that the military -- with large number of satellites, antennae, computers, algorithms and databanks as well as people to operate the apparatus -- alone has. Nobody else in government or outside it can do this. That a series of DIRNSAs have made this compelling case for the need for a topnotch, near-infallible warning system to a series of presidents and overseers. Inman readily admitted that when he was head of NSA he "did not have the vision to anticipate an attack like 9/11." And that he believed the nation was still at high risk for a repeat. Not many presidents could resist this argument, nor could many corporations should they have been trusted enough to be told what a few in government were told. Inman said the FBI was good at what it does but it was clueless about what NSA does. And NSA is not going to tell the FBI, which leads to nasty blow-ups. What remains is what DoJ is told about NSA's activities. Inman agreed with other panelists that DoJ will write a legal justification for whatever it is told. Sure, a few DoJ lawyers will refuse, but there are many others who will do it. Just as there are differences in DoJ, there are differences in NSA about complying with law governing surveillance, and at the present time newcomers are eager to skirt the law oldtimers, burned by the 1970s investigations, are scared shitless to break. Hayden is not with the old-timers because failure to warn of 9/11 was the greatest NSA failure ever -- CIA on the sidelines but taking the hit. Inman said he would probably do what Hayden did faced with the same circumstances. Inman said in response to an audience challenge that he believed in covert surveillance, "I've saved lives with it, the nation needs it." He emphasized, however, that oversight was essential to preserve democracy, and the FISA needs to be rewritten to fit today's enemy. He said he helped write the original FISA, all done in secret. He was not sure how open the rewrite could be, and he was troubled by the lack of intelligence oversight. ********************************************************************** For Listserv Instructions, see http://www.lawlists.net/cyberia Off-Topic threads: http://www.lawlists.net/mailman/listinfo/cyberia-ot Need more help? Send mail to: Cyberia-L-Request@listserv.aol.com ********************************************************************** ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]