Shallow Surveillance Efforts Like PRISM Will Only Catch The 'Stupidest, Lowest-Ranking Of Terrorists'

from the better-watch-out-for-the-skin-deep dept

Tue, Jun 25th 2013 7:48am — Tim Cushing

Government officials keep assuring the public that these surveillance programs are in place to track terrorists and prevent further violent activity aimed at our nation. But much of what the government actually tracks and collects is nearly useless. It's aimed at the sort of platforms and communication devices used by the general public -- the sort of people who make use of the "top level" because they actually have nothing to hide.

Leonid Bershidsky argues that casting the net wide, but only to a shallow depth, won't actually "catch" anything but the most inept of terrorists.

The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency, however, may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype, Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous elements typically use.

Truly dangerous people are smart enough to know to avoid anything easily tracked, surveilled or easily exposed. There may be a little value in catching anything that briefly rises to the surface or surveilling the "public faces" of terrorism, but those serious about their agenda will be operating far below these easily-tapped sources.

In a January 2012 report titled “Jihadism on the Web: A Breeding Ground for Jihad in the Modern Age,” the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service drew a convincing picture of an Islamist Web underground centered around “core forums.” These websites are part of the Deep Web, or Undernet, the multitude of online resources not indexed by commonly used search engines.

The Netherlands’ security service, which couldn’t find recent data on the size of the Undernet, cited a 2003 study from the University of California at Berkeley as the “latest available scientific assessment.” The study found that just 0.2 percent of the Internet could be searched. The rest remained inscrutable and has probably grown since. In 2010, Google Inc. said it had indexed just 0.004 percent of the information on the Internet.

If someone or something doesn't want to be found on the internet, it's easy to stay hidden, or at the very least, continue to operate below the dragnet. On top of what's not being indexed, there are options available to go completely off the grid. This makes steady communication difficult, but not impossible. What does happen on the net is encrypted or otherwise obfuscated.

Communication on the core forums is often encrypted. In 2012, a French court found nuclear physicist Adlene Hicheur guilty of, among other things, conspiring to commit an act of terror for distributing and using software called Asrar al-Mujahideen, or Mujahideen Secrets. The program employed various cutting-edge encryption methods, including variable stealth ciphers and RSA 2,048-bit keys.

As Bershidsky puts it, tools like the PRISM system and phone metadata are much better suited for surveilling those who don't have any reason to suspect the government has an interest in their movements and actions. In other words: American citizens, the same people who are supposedly not being targeted.

If the FBI and the NSA are only interested in catching clumsy would-be terrorists who can't be bothered to stay off open channels, then, much like the programs themselves, they can only offer us a false sense of security. Being saved from the bench warmers of the terrorism world doesn't ultimately do anything to increase safety, but it does give these agencies something to point to when their actions are questioned. (The FBI has practically set up its own "Busting Stupid Terrorists" cottage industry.) "We stopped [insert plausible but impressive number here] attacks, therefore we need to continue collecting 'dots' and multiple haystacks of connective material."

Whatever the FBI and NSA are gathering from skimming the web's surface is only a minute percentage of what's available. It would seem that deeper, targeted efforts would be much more effective, rather than simply asking for everything and working backwards. But if the actual intent is to surveill American citizens (with prevented acts of terrorism being a bonus), then these agencies are in the perfect position to do exactly that.

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Filed Under: dark web, deep web, encryption, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, terrorism, terrorists

48 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 6:18am

Start shallow then dive in your Orwellian goal. The shallow part is what we know that is in place. If the ultimate goal is to control the general public this is a good start.

The USA triumphs!
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Jay (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 7:39am

So wait...
So let me get this straight... The US has all of this power of surveillance but they can't find Edward Snowden?

What's the point of this program again?
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Zakida Paul (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 7:53am

Re: So wait...
It took them 10 years to find Bin Laden, for crying out loud. It will probably take another 10 to get Snowden.

Meanwhile millions (or even billions) of dollars will be wasted in the pursuit. The US government never learns.
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Ima Fish (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 7:53am

Can someone explain something to me. How is tracking everyone's phone calls supposed to stop terrorism when anyone can buy a private phone?

Last week I bought a TracFone for my son and got it working without ever having to provide any personal information. I bought it and the card with cash. And signed up for the service with a new email address.
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th (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 7:54am

This makes no sense
This article only makes sense if the NSA is using Google to reach out and FIND terrorist activity. But it doesn't. It plugs into the undersea cables etc and scopes up absolutely everything that goes across the line, indexed or not. Terrorists would have to have a dedicated separate cabling system to communicate and not be intercepted.
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Zakida Paul (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 7:55am

This is what I have been saying, top level terrorists are savvy enough to stay under the radar and remain undetected by the authorities. These are the terrorists who carried out 9/11, not the low level terrorists caught by surveillance who know very little of their organisation's plans.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:13am

Political Uprisings
One purpose of the dragnet is to identify uprisings so that they can be quashed early on. The ostensible "terrorism" reason is only to fool the more impressionable of us, which fortunately is dwindling in light of these leaks.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:17am

Re: This makes no sense
Remember, there are multiple parts to the NSA programs. PRISM is the program where they are getting other companies, like Google, to give them information they have. PRISM is not the tapping at the line level.
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out_of_the_blue, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:30am

The general public IS the target, plus scooping up new tech.
This Techdirt minion just contributes to misunderstanding the purpose of state surveillance: it's not in any degree to keep the public safe, it's to enforce tyranny.

Having accepted the state's false premise, you can only help the state.

And because "capitalist" there's a strong economic component: NSA sweeps up enough to give insiders tips (the data is "shared" among thousands of corporations), so it's quite effective industrial espionage (but not used in national interests, only to the privileged Rich). That's nailed down by Eric Schmidt having remarked that Google (internally) gleans enough to be illegal to use in the stock market.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:30am

When I turned on the faucet this morning all this dihydrogen monoxide started pouring out. I was going to complain to the city but I was afraid it would make me a terrorist.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:35am

Re: Re: So wait...
Hey, catching Bin Laden at least created MILLIONS of new jobs, if you believe the government's claims that we were only in Afghanistan and Iraq to catch Bin Laden. Thanks to all of those troops and private contractors that needed to be hired to do that.

There was a comic about that a few years ago I saw, about all the 'jobs' Bin Laden created with around two dozen poorly trained terrorists and some really cheap ordinary objects. The comic ended with Bin Laden inflicting his great terrorist attack yet on America, closing Al Queda and killing the millions of jobs he created!
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Miff (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:36am

Wow, France's laws are strange
Encryption is illegal there but it's also the home of the massively patent infringing VLC?
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sehlat (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:45am

Catch Only the Most Inept?
Wow! They're gonna be selecting for smarter terrorists! Charles Darwin is smiling in his grave.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:46am

Re: Re: So wait...
That's a good point, and one I've made elsewhere. Any competent government would have captured Bin Laden in a week. But not this one: no, it took these clowns 10 YEARS and then they couldn't even manage the simple task of bringing him back alive. The stupid...it burns.
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Bruce, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:46am

Know Your Enemy
While catching the stupidest terrorists is part of the program, it is much more about monitoring discontent, dissent, and those who promulgate such - not just those who are violent, but anyone who might encourage change in a way that is not part of the plan. Know your enemy is the name of the game.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:46am

@ ootb - if you would just stop with the ad homs your posts would get taken more seriously.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:47am

Re: This makes no sense
You're presuming that those cables are the only way to transmit large quantities of data across continents.

They're not. They never have been. They never will be.
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Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:51am

Re: Re: Re: So wait...
Broken window fallacy.

All of the money, time, and manpower might have been better spent doing something else (building infrastructure, training people in high-tech jobs, R&D on new technology, whatever).
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:53am

Truly dangerous people are smart enough to know to avoid anything easily tracked, surveilled or easily exposed.

Then it's a real shame for you that the analysis of the 9/11 attackers and Bin Laden himself shows they routinely used 'common' communication methods, as well as 'advanced' methods, that are also monitored by security authorities such as Satellite phones.

And it's a poor argument saying it only stops "SOME" terrorists, when 1 Terrorist or group can do massive damage.

1 is too many, when that 1 results in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Americans, and people from other countries.

prior to 9/11 it was claims NSA and other security authorities were not doing enough, and not working closely enough together, post 9/11 there was an outcry because it was seen the US Gov was not doing enough, so they responded to that and did more..

Clearly it does not take a great deal of skill or technical expertise to inflict a great deal of damage, so catching the low hanging fruit weeds out a huge amount of potential damage. And any one act is enough !!!.

It also shows how the present methods are therefore working, if it now requires a certain level of expertise to 'get around' these systems, that is sufficient deterrent in itself to stop a lot of people even getting started.

You 'arguments' are just as effective in support of monitoring and surveillance as it is against it. But nice try though.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:00am

A man is walking around town, clapping his hands.
Another man stops and asks what the man is doing.
The first man replies, "Keeping the a̶l̶l̶i̶g̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s̶ terrorists away"
The second man replies, "I don't see any a̶l̶l̶i̶g̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s̶ terrorists."
The first man replies, "Exactly."
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Vincent Clement (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:00am

Re: This makes no sense
But only stupid terrorists would use global communication networks to communicate with each other. So the original premise stands. It's not like one Bin Laden's number two guys picked up the phone and had a detailed discussion with him about their next attack.
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Vincent Clement (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:03am

Re:
Or the "terrorists" who are set up by the FBI, who then claims that the data analyzed by the NSA helped the FBI 'catch' the terrorists.
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Niall (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:07am

Re: Re: Re: Re: So wait...
That's the whole point of it being a comic - it was lampooning the whole situation.

And certainly the boy paid to throw stones and the glazier have done rather well out of the whole process.
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Niall (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:09am

Re:
And just how stupidly low-lying is it to allow box cutters on a plane and check-in from the kerb?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:11am

Re:
prior to 9/11 it was claims NSA and other security authorities were not doing enough

�Ron Suskind, George W. Bush and the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB�, By Tim Grieve, Salon, June 20, 2006

Bush to briefer: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

�.�.�.�.

We�ve known for years now that George W. Bush received a presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, in which he was warned: �Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.� We�ve known for almost as long that Bush went fishing afterward.

What we didn�t know is what happened in between the briefing and the fishing, and now Suskind is here to tell us. Bush listened to the briefing, Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer: �All right. You�ve covered your ass, now.�
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vastrightwing, 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:14am

Spot on!
You are spot on! This PRISM system was never intended to catch terrorists due to its limited scope and capability.

Another point is the cost vs. the return on investment. Look at the cost of this intrusion. The amount of so called terrorists this PRISM program would catch is statistically zero.

So why pour all this money into an ineffectual system to catch the tiniest percentage of terrorists? Because, as you already pointed out, PRISM was designed to spy on us the whole time. I submit PRISM's main goal is to harvest intelligence on domestic and world wide "enemies" at tax payer's expense.

This dragnet is effective at uncovering business information and information on enemies of the state. The so called stupid people who aren't aware they are being spied on. Because why would our own government spy on us? I propose the government isn't doing it for domestic security, they're doing to for businesses that paid to get this system going: to get a leg up on the competition. The people in power also want to know how much trouble they're in before the rest of us reacts.

I think it's that simple. And yes, the cost justifies that because it cost them nothing: taxpayers funded it. No private funds went into the building of this dragnet. In short, people of power got a free intelligence drag net they can use against us. Therefore the return on investment is infinity. The terrorism angle/justification is only for public consumption.
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madasahatter (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:16am

Effeciency
It is safe to assume that many governments are monitoring Internet, email, cellphone, etc. traffic both domestically and internationally. The only questions are the scope of these programs and what methods cause problems for the spooks. Intelligent terrorists are using techniques to hide their activities from easy monitoring. So what is the real purpose behing these programs?
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vastrightwing, 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:20am

Re: Re: Re: So wait...
Bin ladden was captured when it was expedient. Of course they could get him whenever they wanted him. Look where he was "hiding". That's not a place a person hides to avoid capture. Bin Ladden knew very well he would be taken in when his time came. Obama wanted a trophy so Bin laden was brought in.
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vastrightwing, 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:24am

Re: Re: Re: So wait...
I understand your point about Bin Ladden "creating" millions of jobs. However, I feel compelled to point out this is the broken window fallacy.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:26am

Wait, was the nuclear guy convicted for using an encryption program...? Did that actually add anything to the case against him or the penalties he faced? Anyone know?
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Jeroen Hellingman (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:27am

Response to: Ima Fish on Jun 25th, 2013 @ 7:53am
Typically, that phone will be linked to your son within a few days, because of the movement and call patterns. The top five dialed numbers are typically used as a fingerprint to identify phone users, also for purposes of fraud detection.
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John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:47am

Re: Re: Re: Re: So wait...
Why didn't Bush want that "trophy"?
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John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 9:48am

Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Jun 25th, 2013 @ 7:53am
If you're keeping the phone for more than a day and you're using it for general purposes then you're doing burners wrong.
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OldGeezer (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 10:07am

Re: Wow, France's laws are strange
I'm not saying that you are wrong but enlighten me how VLC player is infringing. Can't be infringing on Microsoft's WM player because VLC has always been years ahead with features and options that Microsoft eventually "borrows" for their player. All the way back to the DOS era Microsoft plays catch up with other people's programs. Every time there was a new version of DOS all the improvements were MS incorporating popular shareware utilities. For years every new version of Explorer was just rip offs of features that Firefox already had.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 10:09am

Re:
True, that. You have absolutely no skill or technical expertise and the sheer amount of brain damage you inflict is massive.
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art guerrilla (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 10:16am

Re: Political Uprisings
exactly...
this has little-to-nothing to do with 'fighting' 'terrorism', and a whole lot of big brother-ism to do with fighting -and frightening- their own citizenry into unquestioning obedience...

art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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OldGeezer (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 10:19am

Just the beginning
I believe that this is just the beginning of the revelations about spying. I would not be surprised if it turns out that the government has data from every phone company, every Google search, everybody's browsing history etc. 1984 is here. It is just three decades late.
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John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 10:30am

Re: Re: Wow, France's laws are strange
VLC has long has problems with patents. This is inevitable if you're creating a video player -- multimedia software patents are perhaps the worst corner of the software patent mess. Software patents in general make it impossible to write a nontrivial application without infringing, and doubly impossible in the field of multimedia.
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Roland, 25 Jun 2013 @ 11:17am

false premise
It's never about catching 'terrists' or any other bogeyman. It's about funding. It's about tranferring taxpayer dollars to companies like Booz Allen. Google 'War is a Racket'..that includes InfoWar. Loss of freedom, loss of lives, loss of productivity mean nothing as long as the dollars continue to flow. These bureaucrats aren't rubbing their hands with glee over taking your freedoms away, that's just a side effect. They are rubbing their hands with glee over their black budget.
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btr1701, 25 Jun 2013 @ 2:21pm

Re: Re: Re: So wait...
> it took these clowns 10 YEARS and then
> they couldn't even manage the simple task
> of bringing him back alive

No one wanted him captured alive.
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nubwaxer (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 2:39pm

waste
the real criticism is that it is a huge, inefficient and costly venture that yields a tiny amount of dubious information while collecting and storing everything available to it, or in other words a government make work program.
snowden broke the law but a public discussion could bring needed changes to our over reactions that infringe on our rights far beyond keeping us secure.
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John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 3:34pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: So wait...
No one did? So everyone was so blinded by bloodlust that nobody could see the military and/or propaganda value in having him in custody? Nobody could see how killing him would inevitably leave room for doubt, both reasonable and unreasonable, about the veracity of the US government's story?

I believe you. That sort of idiocy explains just about everything about the US response to 9/11.
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jlaprise (profile), 25 Jun 2013 @ 4:30pm

Full court press
No, it has its place alongside other undisclosed tools.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 5:02pm

Re:
The second man replies, "I don't see any a̶l̶l̶i̶g̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s̶ terrorists."

the first man say's "where were you on 9/11 or Boston, or for the Anthrax letters, or when McVae kill a bunch of people and kids, or when Wall Street was bombed, or when the US Embassies are bombed ??"

the second man say "Oh Now I get it"..
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Sambo, 25 Jun 2013 @ 6:26pm

Re: truly dangerous
Is that the same surveillance and 'common' communication methods that were used gather intelligence that Iraq had WMD's and was in bed with Al Qaeda used to justify the Iraq war that ended up with something like 200,000 Iraqi's dead?

There is no way that this end justifies the means.

Given how much an open ended dragnet this is, may was well give the NSA, MI6 etc something to do.

If enough people started to make sure every email, post and search contained at least one of the following words; infidel, bomb, Bin Laden, jihad, etc then that could be the making of some fun. I wonder if we can get some spammers to help?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2013 @ 8:29pm

Re: The general public IS the target, plus scooping up new tech.
How much Alex Jones do you watch? You're starting to sound a lot like him.
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btr1701 (profile), 26 Jun 2013 @ 2:44pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So wait...
> So everyone was so blinded by bloodlust
> that nobody could see the military and/or
> propaganda value in having him in custody?

It wasn't bloodlust and they weren't blinded by anything. There were very well thought out reasons why the powers that be preferred a dead bin Laden to a live one.
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InThEkNoW, 14 Jun 2017 @ 2:16am

Scratching the surface folks
Even this information only scratches how deep the rabbit hole really goes. While debating the technology here, they take the eyes of many off of hush hush new technologies that far surpass the reading of an email or listening to a phone call. Smile :-) we are all on candid camera. Good Morning. http://wpubs.com/reverse-imaging-technology-mass-surveillence/
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