[Clips] Note the date: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

[R.A. Hettinga]

...From the "so, what else is new?" file...

Cheers,
RAH
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  Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 22:06:31 -0400
  To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
  From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: [Clips] Note the date: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove,
  	Officials Report
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<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ei=5090&en=016edb46b79bde83&ex=1293080400&pagewanted=print>

  The New York Times

  December 24, 2005

  Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

  By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

  WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed
  large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out
  of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President
  Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of
  terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

  The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice
  networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White
  House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping
  directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main
  arteries, they said.

  As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance
  without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American
  telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of
  domestic and international communications, the officials said.

  The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have
  raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar
  with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence
  Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications
  growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has
  legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass
  through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials
  familiar with the matter.

  "There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with
  the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways
  through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking
  about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was,
  How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large
  volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

  Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance
  program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his
  executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the
  monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving
  people with known links to Al Qaeda.

  What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides
  actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large
  volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might
  point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large
  data-mining operation.

  The current and former government officials who discussed the program were
  granted anonymity because it remains classified.

  Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the
  technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches
  to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified,
  many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members
  of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are
  eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its
  legality.

  Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have
  knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze
  communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling
  whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the
  origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and
  from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular
  interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

  This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would,
  in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to
  trace who calls whom.

  The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in
  other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection
  with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for
  tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps
  program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately
  scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil
  liberties.

  But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and
  analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect
  terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the
  program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by
  Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not
  give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats
  at home.

  A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that
  since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been
  storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal
  government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

  "All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared
  with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in
  that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did
  not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern
  about revealing trade secrets.

  Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as
  eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

  "If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going
  to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive
  amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in
  Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines
  of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."

  Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the
  N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some
  of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to
  switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States'
  communications networks and international networks. The identities of the
  corporations involved could not be determined.

  The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some
  Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the
  globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many
  international-to-international calls are also routed through such American
  switches.

  One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the
  N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American
  government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the
  telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic
  that is routed through American-based switches.

  The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the
  intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully
  addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that
  foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some
  judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls
  as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the
  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved
  warrants for domestic surveillance.

  Historically, the American intelligence community has had close
  relationships with many communications and computer firms and related
  technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major
  telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major
  corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational
  capability, according to current and former government officials.

  Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast
  telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be
  significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like
  this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous
  vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.

  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
  44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
  [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
  experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'