After blowing $100m to snoop on Americans' phone call logs for four years, what did the NSA get? Just one lead The controversial surveillance program that gave the NSA access to the phone call records of millions of Americans has cost US taxpayers $100m – and resulted in just one useful lead over four years. That’s the upshot of a report [PDF] from the US government's freshly revived Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB …
Well the people at the NSA probably also got yet another chance & way of spying on their husbands & wives so there is that too. Still a tad expensive though.
I knew this scheme and more than half of the other things in the original terrorist laws were a waste of time. There is one simple fact they keep trying to skirt - THEY KNEW THE 911 ATTACK WAS COMING but wouldn't listen to their field people about the warning signs; and the three letter agencies weren't allowed to communicate with each other to compare threats and data - So DUH! The single most valuable act that resulted from the early laws, was the combining of intelligence from ALL the agencies, and the easy sharing between such agencies.
HOWEVER! We also forget there was a reason that separation of law enforcement and intelligence agencies was done in the first place - because it was ABUSED during the civil rights and anti-war movement days. I'm willing to risk the abuse, but they must cut back to simple data sharing, and that is all - no other special powers need be given these people, because using common sense and age old investigative techniques are more efficient and effective in the first place. Keeping the public aware to report if they see something and make sure and say something will be even more effective - and THAT is where the data gathering and maybe even Advanced Intelligence needs to be focused. Let the AI bots look at read all the public available knowledge out there and I guarantee they will catch more plots for crazy people to commit than ever before.
In fact, we have foiled more school shootings in our state, by simply using the "see something say something" adage than anything else.
Exactly, elReg say "spent $100M" like it's a bad thing, but won't somebody think of the poor contractors who got rich off all of this? Not to mention all the politicians who got kickbacks for continually re-authorising the program.
It's not a government by the people, for the corporations for nothing you know!
The Senate and House bills appear to be going nowhere despite even President Trump tweeting that he favors reform. Note that only part of Section 215 is expiring in March.
Current speculation over here is that the expiring part of Section 215 will be extended as is because otherwise Senate and House members will be accused of being soft on terrorism.
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.” (Thomas Jefferson)
This seems to be a typical bureaucratic waste of money and resources. It seems like the NSA thought wading through a pile of data when they do not know where to look would be successful. Are there terrorists in the US, certainly but the major groups are well known. And generally most of the key membership is known. Being monitored, they could cause problems but it is likely a halfway competent plod will figure out they are up to something before they strike. Also, sifting through reams of data will not normally find the lone wolves who by definition are hard to find until they act.
Being monitored, they could cause problems but it is likely a halfway competent plod will figure out they are up to something before they strike. Also, sifting through reams of data will not normally find the lone wolves who by definition are hard to find until they act.
Yup, and we've had decades of movies & TV technothrillers showing how intrepid agents use tech to catch bad guys. So bad actors can become more forensically aware, even if the shows exagerate for dramatic effect. Plus the most serious & organised would know about operating as a cell, and keeping communications to a minimum. Snowden gets blamed for revealing methods, but a criminal doesn't have to be that smart to know their phone is tracking them.
It would be interesting to do some cost/benefit/privacy analysis to demonstrate benefit vs the cost & privacy implications. That currently doesn't look great given the number of detections, but could do some reanalysis using past cases to determine if the NSA could have added any value to solving those crimes. And I suspect the answer would be 'No', at least compared to traditional methods of LEO's finding a person of interest and requesting their CDRs. And that's probably less valuable given criminals can use P2P (Perp2Perp?) encrypted messaging or voice. The main benefit of the NSA's horde is probably only historical, ie retaining CDRs for longer than 6 or 12 months than telcos do. But that also assumes the NSA lets other agencies request data.
Most of the best techniques for fighting organized gangs and cells were developed in the pre-smartphone era (like over 100 years ago). It has long been recognized the communication has to occur and that anything other than face-to-face in a secure room risks interception, letters can be opened, telegrams purloined, POTS tapped, etc. So minimizing the paper/electronic trail has been a major consideration for a long time. Now, in some respects, all the electronic toys have a tendency to leave electronic/video trails that are hard to erase which makes a competent plod's job a lot easier. And one problem for any miscreant is there are plenty of video cameras around which they do not control or own. Plus, any phone being carried will likely have a GPS on which will nicely track their location, remember phones are too convenient to left at home even when you should.
Peter’s Palantir is eating $1B/annual these days. You can’t expect that sort of private sector performance if you start killing the programs that feed it.
Our government has completely abandoned the idea of growth through excellence and is nothing but the pivot man in the biggest circle jerk in history.
It’s embarrassing.
of a morsel of meat been thrown to the dogs to distract attention. Any really useful information would never have been allowed to escape the confines of the NSA and their brethren. Especially if you consider that these sorts of operations primary targets include those whom are instigating the investigation. Oh dear, only a $100 million spent, sorry about that, but don't worry, it wasn't very useful anyway. Nothing to see here. Move along now.
And I've not read the report to know, but this reporting of the report highlights the number of new positive leads, and tangentially mentions the intercept reports that reinforced existing intelligence. But what of the other way round of working? Where there was existing low-grade intelligence and this system provided information which could grade those reports and thus allow focus on higher threats, or provided cost savings by excluding "false positives"?
Only saying because I like to turn things on their head to look at them.
Mind you, if there was any significant benefit looking at it that way, I'm sure the report would have highlighted it! Anything to get that funding renewed / prove ti wasn't a waste of money.
"I don't want to get off on the wrong foot here by sticking my toe in, but in the US we don't have paedophiles, we have pedophiles."
The UK has a different form of government and it's led to a surplus of vowels they have to get rid of some how. You see it all over the place. Especially with those lonely "e's". The pair them up with a surplus "a" and all is again in balance.
El Reg, you have so much to learn about the Washington DC/bureaucratic mindset. Rule one--once gained, power or jurisdiction is never relinquished. Rule two--when considering cancelling, deauthorizing or cutting the budget for programs, refer to rule one.....
If the US Congress was all that concerned that the spy agencies are out of control, they could very easily reduce their budgets. They pass the budget, not the President. Why isn't this happening? Hmmmmmm, I expect that those agencies are very very useful on occasion. Say around election times when digging up dirt on an opponent is more important than morals.
It's an ancient and fundamental principle of good intelligence that you shouldn't bury valuable information in dross. Targeting and refinement work a lot better than arbitrary trawling. Indeed this report demonstrates that as all the positives were already on the radar.
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