[CYBERIA] Liability of phone companies [perhaps off-topic]

[John Young]

L at 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.


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