The Question the NSA is Not Answering
The NSA is claiming that the data that they grabbed in essentially warrant-less Hoovering up of telephone and Internet metadata has helped in certain investigations.
I have no doubt that is probably true.
But that is not the right way to frame the problem. The real issue is: Did being able to data mine metadata for all Americans help solve the case better and faster than had they been required to seek specific probable cause warrants for data from specific people?
To make clear the distinction, let's suppose I were trying to justify stealing a copy of every book in Barnes & Noble. I might be able to accurately say that those books helped me writing a good Napoleon paper for school. But could I have achieved the same goal - writing a paper on Napoleon - by purchasing individual books as needed via legal shopping processes? The answer is probably "yes." Having all the books pre-stolen only contributed in that it saved me the hassle of going down to the store and finding a specific book I needed.
In the same way, I suspect that having this data base merely saved FBI and others the hassle of filling out some paperwork in each case. I am not sure incremental success rates in a few cases is enough justification to rip up the Constitution, but I am sure that laziness is not.
I don't get why, if high up operatives of the government want to spy on folks they wouldn't ask the NSA FBI and IRS to collaborate. You seem to have a lot of trust. I guess maybe it didn't happen this time, but I bet if Hillary becomes president - following Obama's example it will happen.
There is no such thing as a reasonable search. You can search if you have probably cause or if someone is in immediate danger.
Yes and even stupid people like me can construct a simple SQL database query and find all folks you have been talking to, and then I can very easily find out their associations. I don't know all the data they were tracking but they admitted to tracking phone numbers and the links to other numbers called which are very conveniently put into a searchable transaction database.
If I could get a record of all the unique numbers a person calls. and the number of times each number is called I can get a lot of information about you. And I could do it in a matter of seconds. Your doctor, what groups you belong to, who you donate to. And believe it or not folks don't call all that many numbers in a year.
If I am stupid, and I know at least some ways to manipulate the data to get information I would want to find out about people I don't like, I am sure at least one of the 40K geniuses at the NSA, can figure out quite a bit more.
" I have a PhD and spent 20 years in private industry doing essentially the same thing."
And yet you seem to have no clue about the power of searching, sorting and matching capabilities of the database.
Maybe in another 20 years you will be an expert.
You can use one metadata set to find enemies, and tell the IRS to harass them. Eh, not so complex to figure out.
A phone number is not unspecific.
20 years ago, I really thought Kathy Ireland was cute. Wonder what she looks like today.
Guy there is no huge error in a list of phone numbers with links to other phone numbers called. And the point is to find out who Carl is talking to, to harass his compatriots as well, and do a 3 level deep search to find what organizations they are planning with.
At least you are no longer denying the ability to do simple SQL queries on a database. If the metadata has phone numbers, which they admitted, there is no way that this is just a glob of data with no way to find out who is doing the calling - just trying to detect patterns.
Hey look we found a pattern but we have no idea who anyone is. Great. Look the Eiffel tower was just blown up, well that validates the pattern, but nothing we can do with it. How moronic.
Did you buy your Phd from an online overseas university? Just wondering.
If you take billions of phone calls and put them in a database with a one to one correspondence, in a matter of seconds I can find out considerable facts about you - once I look up your phone number.
Blanket warrants were issued, and I don't Believe FISA rejected any warrant last year.
That is easy, if I go three places away from you, I can find out all the associations of your group. If I find out all the group associations, I can target them for tax and or legal harassment.
That is why I was using Karl Rove as an example. Could do the same with Rahm Emmanuel as well, for a left wing example.
Actually it is true, they do tend to try to collect data to trip people up in court, if you say one thing and then another, even though it is inadvertent they will tag you for perjury. It has happened to several CEO's who otherwise did nothing. It happened to Scooter Libby.
You misunderstand NSA's role. NSA a a technical intelligence agency, just like NRO or NGA. These are distinct functions from those of CIA, FBI or DIA. Contrary to TV or movies, NSA doesn't have spies. It doesn't have secret agents, intelligence officers who recruit spies, etc. It has technicians. CIA (and to a much lesser extent, FBI) are customers for NSA products.
They would be much more likely to run into resistance or even exposure if they involve the intelligence agencies, especially the NSA. CIA and NSA are both sensitive about this sort of thing, but with its military leadership, NSA is likely to be even more sensitive.
As for trust.... do you trust the Army to not show up on your doorstep and execute you? They have a huge amount of power. I don't hear anyone calling for us to disarm them. In other words, sometimes you need to give the government huge powers and sometimes you don't. The military is the organization to which we give the greatest power, and it has a very strong and deeply embedded ethic of staying out of civilian affairs - especially in the officer corps. Even if some generals (who are more likely to be politicized) go along with things, lower level officers would raise hell. Hillary would find herself in very deep trouble if she tried to do this sort of thing.