How The FBI Actually Does Much Of The NSA's Spying, But Is Keeping That Quiet

from the like-they-don't-have-a-history-of-abuses? dept

For all the focus on the NSA of late, a few folks have been trying to remind everyone that the FBI is heavily involved in all of this and, in many ways, has an equally bad if not worse record in abusing the rights of Americans. Many of the programs discussed were to retrieve information by the FBI or the NSA, and it turns out that the FBI often does much of the dirty work for the NSA, including interfacing with various companies to get access to data. We'd mentioned recently how the FBI was pushing tech companies to install "port readers" at both telco and tech companies (though, many tech firms were resisting), and also that the FBI had been ramping up their use of malware.

Shane Harris, over at Foreign Policy has a nice profile on the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit, or DITU, who handles most of this work. It repeats the story of the port readers, but adds how the DITU is often the unit that works with tech companies and then passes info along to the NSA -- so some companies don't even realize they're dealing with the NSA, believing it's just via the FBI (not that this would make things any better). It also notes that the DITU tends to be made up of a lot of ex-telco guys who know very specifically how the telco networks work, something that at least some people at the telcos may be uncomfortable with the government knowing (though, again, the telcos seem much more willing to open up to the government than the tech companies).

It's an interesting profile all around, but at the end it gets even more interesting, as an ex-law enforcement source that Harris talks to highlights that without investigating what the DITU is up to, Congress' exploration of what's going on will be very incomplete.

The former law enforcement official said Holder and Mueller should have offered testimony and explained how the FBI works with the NSA. He was concerned by reports that the NSA had not been adhering to its own minimization procedures, which the Justice Department and the FBI review and vouch for when submitting requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"Where they hadn't done what was represented to the court, that's unforgivable. That's where I got sick to my stomach," the former law enforcement official said. "The government's position is, we go to the court, apply the law -- it's all approved. That makes for a good story until you find out what was approved wasn't actually what was done."

That makes it sound like even more bad behavior is going to be revealed eventually...

Filed Under: ditu, fbi, nsa, spying, surveillance

Newly Leaked NSA Slides On PRISM Add To Confusion, Rather Than Clear It Up

from the hmmm dept

Over the weekend there were two "big" new leaks from the documents that Ed Snowden took. The first, about US spying on EU embassies we already covered. The second one seemed bigger, but it also might have just made things murkier. It involves the Washington Post releasing four more slides about the PRISM program from that original slide deck that already had 5 of its 41 slides revealed in previous leaks. These slides show a lot more details about PRISM. What's amazing is that I've seen people claiming completely contrary things in looking over these slides: some are insisting it shows that the companies who are "members" of PRISM don't -- as was originally reported -- open up their servers to the NSA. Others insist that the slides actually support that original reporting and show that the companies are lying.

First up, here are the slides (sorry visitors from the Defense Department):





Things break down when people start to analyze these slides. A few news sources have zeroed in on the claim on that last slide that there are 117,675 "records" in PRISM as of April 5th. But, there's some disagreement about what the hell that means. The Washington Post says that these are "active surveillance targets" but it's unclear how they know that. It's possible that there's other, as yet unrevealed info that would support that, but even then there's confusion. How "active" is active? And, what constitutes a "record" anyway? No one seems to be providing any answers.

Another thing that's not entirely clear: the Washington Post annotations claim that the "FBI DITU," the "Data Intercept Technology Unit" (DITU), is on the premises of the companies listed as a part of PRISM -- but all of the companies have pretty strenuously denied this. And, honestly, from the slides, it's not at all clear that the DITU really is on-premises. Google has said in the past that when it receives a valid FISA court order under the associated program, it uses secure FTP to ship the info to the government. From that, it seems like the "DITU" could just be a government computer somewhere, not on the premises of these companies, and info is uploaded to those servers following valid FISC orders.

Others have focused in on the claims of "real-time surveillance," implying the ability to watch actual key strokes, but the slide in question (the third one above) suggests something slightly different: which is real time notifications for certain trigger events, such as logging into email or sending a message. Now, it does note that other forms of communication are available through the program, but it's not at all clear that's "real time." It's also not at all clear if the "real time" notifications apply to all companies in the program. It's entirely possible that a FISC order might require these companies to let the FBI/NSA know whenever a certain target logged into their email or chat. There are certainly some questions raised there about the appropriateness of that type of program, but it's not clear how much "real time" info is actually being sent.

It's entirely possible that the Washington Post's interpretation of these slides is accurate. It's also entirely possible that the other slides, or additional reporting from WaPo reporters allows them to have more knowledge on these things, and it could be true that the companies in questions are not being fully truthful. However, especially given how it appears that the WaPo's original reporting on PRISM was fairly sloppy, it seems worth reserving judgment until more information comes out.

Of course, if (as the NSA insists) this program is nothing more than these companies responding to valid FISC orders, I don't see why the NSA itself can't be a hell of a lot more transparent about these programs. If there's real oversight over these programs and they're really only used against actual threats (stop laughing...), then nothing revealed so far seems like it should be secret. It just shows how the system works for delivering the information that is legally required. The fact that there's so much secrecy over the program suggests either a stupid overclassification insistence by the NSA, or that there's a hell of a lot beyond this that they don't want to talk about (such as revealing that the program isn't what they claim). That seems like the most likely situation given what's been revealed so far.

Filed Under: ditu, fbi, leaks, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, washington post