Ex-NSA Official Breezily Reveals Details Of NSA Surveillance Capabilities In Iraq

from the hey,-wait... dept

Throughout the whole Ed Snowden ordeal, defenders of the NSA and the surveillance state keep insisting that revealing even the slightest details of the NSA's capabilities help our enemies "win" because they'll learn how to avoid the surveillance. As such, they've been wringing their hands about how any revelation of what the NSA is up to will cause immense damage. Just recently, the NSA pressed hard on the Washington Post not to reveal the name of the country where the NSA is currently recording every single phone call. The Washington Post agreed to withhold this information -- a decision that some have challenged.

However, barely a week later, in a glowing profile by the LA Times of now-retired NSA boss Keith Alexander, his former number two guy at the NSA, Chris Inglis, who also just retired, breezily admits to the depth of the NSA's surveillance capabilities in Iraq, information that prior to this had not been public:

In Iraq, for example, the National Security Agency went from intercepting only about half of enemy signals and taking hours to process them to being able to collect, sort and make available every Iraqi email, text message and phone-location signal in real time, said John "Chris" Inglis, who recently retired as the NSA's top civilian.

The entire article is a weak (and grossly transparent) attempt to recast General Keith Alexander's legacy -- and thus it seems that Inglis, Alexander and the NSA have no problem at all revealing the details of its capabilities in Iraq when the entire purpose in doing so is an attempt to show how good Alexander was for the NSA. Rest assured, however, had the same bit of information come out from one of the reporters with access to the Snowden documents, the NSA and all its defenders would be screaming as loud as possible about how the publication of such information would cost lives and create immense damage to American interests while aiding our enemies. Yet, apparently, it's all fine and dandy to reveal such information... when it's part of the effort to canonize the NSA retired leader.

Filed Under: capabilities, chris inglis, ed snowden, iraq, keith alexander, nsa, revealing classified info, surveillance

Senators Wyden & Udall Ask If The NSA Is So Confused About Its Own Capabilities, Why Do We Trust Them With All That Data?

from the because-reasons dept

Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have put forth another statement about the recently declassified documents about the NSA's surveillance efforts. As you may remember, one of the points made by the NSA in its defense was that its surveillance systems were so complex that no one person actually understood them all. That leads to a rather obvious question... If the NSA can't even keep track of how its systems work, how can we trust them to know that the system isn't being abused (or that it's accurately doing what the NSA claims):

“Documents declassified last week clearly show that court orders authorizing the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records were consistently violated by the NSA. These documents also show that the government repeatedly made serious misrepresentations to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when seeking authorization to conduct this bulk collection. The intelligence community’s defense was that these violations were occurring because no one had a full grasp of how the bulk collection program actually worked.

"If the assertion that ineptitude and not malice was the cause of these ongoing violations is taken at face value, it is perfectly reasonable for Congress and the American people to question whether a program that no one fully understood was an effective defense of American security at all. The fact that this program was allowed to operate this way raises serious concerns about the potential for blind spots in the NSA’s surveillance programs. It also supports our position that bulk collection ought to be ended.

"The government’s misrepresentations inevitably led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court being consistently misinformed as it made binding rulings on the meaning of U.S. surveillance law. This underscores our concern that intelligence agencies’ assessments and descriptions about particular collection programs — even significant ones — are not always accurate. It is up to Congress, the courts and the public to ask the tough questions and require intelligence officials to back their assertions up with actual evidence. It is not enough to simply defer to these officials’ conclusions without challenging them.”

TL;DR? If the NSA doesn't understand its own capabilities, how can they insist that it's used reasonably and judiciously?

There are, of course, two basic answers to this. The first, is that the NSA was lying about why it failed to properly inform the FISA Court as to its actions. The second is that the NSA is a complete disaster and it really has no clue about its own systems. The NSA would like people to believe the latter, even if most people seem to believe the former. What Wyden and Udall are making clear is that if the the latter is true, then it suggests the NSA needs much more oversight. I would imagine that if the former is true, there are reasons why the NSA needs more oversight as well. So, perhaps the much shorter version of all of this is that the NSA has made it clear it needs much more outside oversight.

Filed Under: capabilities, mark udall, nsa, nsa surveillance, oversight, ron wyden