BCT Editorial – 2/10/06

This page was last updated on February 11, 2006.

Ears; Editorial; Beaver County Times; February 10, 2006.

I suspect the editorial board wanted to write a piece decrying the NSA terrorist surveillance program, but decided against it given all polls show Americans support it. That’s why instead we got an editorial about handling of the data.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“How NSA handles the data it has on innocent Americans is of great importance

“This might have happened to you, or you might know someone who has gone through the experience.

“Someone screws up your credit rating. Or, your name lands on the no-fly list put out by the Transportation Security Administration.

“Getting the resulting mess straightened out is a nightmare, one that for many people never ends.

“The lesson: Once information about you is entered into a data base, it takes on a life of its own.

“This data base issue is an aspect of the eavesdropping on Americans by the National Security Agency that has been overlooked. Thousands of Americans have had their overseas calls tapped under the Bush administration’s clandestine operation.”

[RWC] “Overseas calls?” I thought this was a domestic wiretapping program. <g>

“Here’s how it works, as described in The Washington Post.

“‘Surveillance takes place in several stages. Computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears.

“‘Successive stages of filtering grow more intrusive as artificial intelligence systems rank voice and data traffic in order of likeliest interest to human analysts. But intelligence officers, who test the computer judgments by listening initially to brief fragments of conversation, ‘wash out’ most of the leads within days or weeks.’”

[RWC] Other than a ham-handed attempt to make a bogus point, I don’t understand the use of “intrusive” in this context.

“What’s disturbing is that nobody outside the government knows what happens to the information the NSA collects, how it is being disseminated and to whom.”

[RWC] Do we really want anyone outside of those people conducting the program and those people responsible for its oversight to know “what happens to the information the NSA collects, how it is being disseminated and to whom?”

“The Post reports ‘many features of the surveillance program remain unknown, including what becomes of the non-threatening U.S. e-mails and conversation that the NSA intercepts.’

“The Bush administration isn’t saying. It declined to say whether any of the data is discarded.

“However, it has a track record, and the way in which the Defense Department handled data collected through its Threat and Local Observation Notice domestic surveillance program should give liberty-loving Americans cause for concern.”

[RWC] It’s a little stretch to call TALON a “surveillance program” based on its published description. According to the Air Force, “The Talon reports, as they are called, are based on information from civilians and military personnel who stumble across people or information they think might be part of a terrorist plot or threat against defense facilities at home or abroad. The documents can consist of ‘raw information reported by concerned citizens and military members regarding suspicious incidents,’ said a 2003 memo signed by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. The reports ‘may or may not be related to an actual threat, and its very nature may be fragmented and incomplete,’ the memo said.”

“Instead of deleting information about people who were found to have no connections with terrorism, criminal wrongdoing or foreign intelligence, as required by regulations, Pentagon bureaucrats decided to hang on to some of the information, a clear violation of policy. The information was destroyed only after the media brought this wrongdoing to light.”

[RWC] Here’s a real life problem with the Times apparent support of “deleting information about people who were found to have no connections with terrorism, criminal wrongdoing or foreign intelligence.”

Some time after 9/11, the U.S. collected intelligence about a British citizen indicating a likely connection to terrorism. As a result, U.K. security services kept him under surveillance for a period of time, but came to the conclusion he was no threat. This man who was “no threat” was one of the suicide bombers who attacked London during July 2005.

“The NSA’s collection-sweep has the same potential for abuse of your constitutional rights as the TALON program. If you don’t think it could happen to you, talk to someone whose life has been disrupted because of credit rating problems or because his or her name got entered on the no-fly list.”

[RWC] How does TALON holding onto useless data abuse our constitutional rights? According to all published reports, the alleged incident only violated Pentagon data retention policies, not federal law or the Constitution.

“For your future and our nation’s, what happens to NSA’s data is of great and urgent importance.”

[RWC] I agree with this statement, but it doesn’t mean everyone needs to know how the data is handled. Having such information could allow our enemies to defeat our intelligence gathering operations.