The novellist William Gibson was interviewed on open source radio talking about the NSA wiretap scandal. The wonderful folks at BoingBoing transcribed part of it, and one part of it struck me as particularly interesting.
I’ve been watching with keen interest since the first NSA scandal: I’ve noticed on the Internet that there aren’t many people really shocked by this. Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway.
I keep seeing that in the lower discourse of the Internet, people saying, “Oh, they’re doing it anyway.” In some way our culture believes that, and it’s a real problem, because evidently they haven’t been doing it anyway, and now that they’ve started, we really need to pay attention and muster some kind of viable political response.
It’s very hard to get some people on-board because they think it’s a fait accompli…
I think it’s [the X-Files, Nixon wiretapping, science fiction]. I think it’s predicated in our delirious sense of what’s been happening to us as a species for the past 100 years. During the Cold War it was almost comforting to believe that the CIA was reading everything…
In the very long view, this will turn out to be about how we deal with the technological situation we find ourselves in now. We’ve gotten somewhere we’ve never been before. It’s very interesting. In the short term, I’ve taken the position that it’s very, very illegal and I hope something is done about it.
I was particularly taken with the idea that popular culture has a role to play here. Did Hollywood create the paranoid ‘they are all listening in to us’ culture, or was it merely responding to popular demand. Who creates the zeitgeist that can often have a very big impact on the way the public perceives political and economic and social events? No one controls it, no one can control it, and no one person is in charge of it. And I think that makes it all the more an interesting phenomena to observe.
“We’ve gotten somewhere we’ve never been before. It’s very interesting. In the short term, I’ve taken the position that it’s very, very illegal and I hope something is done about it.”
Get a grip man. The IRS has more information on Americans then this NSA program will ever produce. Geez the NSA is looking at patterns of telephone calls that might expose terrorists cells. You folks in London might appreciate connecting dots after 7/7.
Ah yes. The IRS. There is a paragon of good governance and an ideal we want the rest of the government to emulate. 8|
Presumably jrdroll will hold the NSA to the IRSs high standards for accuracy, fairness, timeliness and consistency. Also to the utter lack of influence that politics has on its goals and priorities.
‘Thank you sir, may I have another?’
This is what happens when an individual has been following the bullcrap about a government that is seperate from its people. We the People, including the NSA, realize the great value of this program in servicing the needs of the Union. Far from being illegal, it is what We the People are doing to exercise our scientific liberty to secure our liberty and ourselves.
I too have always assumed that my phone calls and emails are monitored. I have, for years and years used codes specific to the people I am talking to if I wish my Govt to have no idea what I am actually saying.
Buzz words like “Smack” “Dope” “Bombs” etc will have your communication uploaded to a special file category.So nobody in their right minds uses them (I know people who work in Cheltenham by the way).
The weakness is that to evaluate all this info properly takes a human being listening to the tape, not a machine.
The fact is they dont have enough people with sufficient smarts. Relax and be euphemistic and florid on the phone etc.
I too have always assumed that my phone calls and emails are monitored.
Paranoia is the enemy of rational thought.
It is more useful to argue that the state should not have the power to eaves drop on the citizenry without due cause than to claim that they routinely do.
I guess complete ignorance of our history is required for any nitwit Taking Head these days.
“The Constitution is not a suicide pact”
….. Abraham Lincoln
The US goverment in times of peril has always taken extraordinary measures to protect us. During WW1, ther was a crack down and deportation of european agents involved in fomenting violent anti war activity. In WW2 we shipped Japanese off to camps far away from our west coast defense industries out of fear and caution.
As RAB implies above, there is not the capacity to listen in on *every one’s* phone or email. I know that there are those poor souls who thrill at the idea that their painfully boring existance would be excited by some tantalizingly secretive goverment agency seeking to know something about them.
Lincoln. Another paragon of what we aspire to in government.
For those with lesser understanding of the US constitutional history, George Washington may well have been the ‘Father of our Federal Country’. But Lincoln was clearly the father of our nationalist country. Lincoln finally, late in the game, while nearing failure from lack of support, decided to free the slaves. It was a small concession in his campaign to turn a federation into one single nation, and for this one unwilling concession that he tried his best to avoid, he became a hero.
Why bother with a constitution?
Well put Midwesterner,
But I believe the tension over Slavery was intentionally added to the Constitution by it’s authors. The south thought they could get more congressional representation over the north by counting in the *Other persons*. The south may have had the technical merits correct on their right to secede, but how long do you think two expansionist near similar societies would have coexisted when there was such a huge frontier to fight over?
Tension was not deliberately added to the constitution. It was the inevitable by product of moral people taking offense to state sanctioned slavery. You are right about the south and manipulation the definition of “person”. But no, they wanted their hypocrisy ignored, not to become an ongoing source of tension.
Slavery would have failed faster without national law in the form of the fugitive slave act of 1850.
As for you last statement about coexistence, ahh…. Canada? Mexico?
The strongest will win and they will always be the most life protecting, liberty protecting, property protecting alliance. Clearly, slave states come up short in all of those categories.
To return to the topic, something needs to be said about pragmatism as demonstrated in this case by the activities of the NSA and its supporters.
Pragmatism as a substitute for principles will always ultimately fail. Why? Because pragmatism relies on action and reaction for validation. While this guarantees change, it does not guide outcome. Its horizons are too small. It is the equivalent of driving very carefully around potholes without regard to progress towards your destination.
Principles are required if any progress is to be made towards a chosen destination. It may be necessary to sustain a few jarring bumps and jolts crossing potholes.
It is only because of myopic pragmatism that terrorists are able to, judo style, use our own strength against us. Terrorism has achieved through our reactions, what is impossible to achieve with its actions alone.
If we don’t know what it is we want, if we don’t work for specific outcomes, if we aren’t founded on guiding principles, we will never even retain the freedoms we have, much less gain any.
I would rather live at risk in a free nation than live locked securely in a safe cell.
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.”
Gerge Orwell – Ninteten Eighty Four
Midwesterner,
The problem is that the data that the NSA is collecting (phone # origin, phone # destination, time/date) is not protected information under the Constitution. Never has been.
Feel free to visit here for an overview of what’s really happening, so that your paranoia can have the day off.
Check the comments for the USSC case which specifically allows such data collection.
Gawd knows, I’m as suspicious of the gummint as anyone, and more than most — but this is not the hill to die defending, believe me.
“The novellist William Gibson was interviewed on open source radio talking about the NSA wiretap scandal.”
Geez the openning line in this post is misinformation. The NSA program in question obtained legally from 3rd parties telephone numbers records. Nothing was tapped ie conversation were not recorded
Kim,
This is our CCTV. ‘If you have nothing to hide, yada yada …’
Please allow me to quote your page –
Simple arithmatic says this is way false.
Phone number + phone book = name. And yes, the official phone ‘books’ do have unlisted numbers.
I’ll sleep better knowing the Supreme Court thinks it’s all right.
Kim, in some fields you are savant. But in matters of moral philosophy, you are a pragmatist. While I dearly hope we are on the same side if things ever get wet, you will never be my moral guide.
Self ownership is not just a hill worth defending, it’s the only hill worth defending. Whether it’s personal communications, who I associate with, how I vote, what I eat, what I read, what I watch or what’s in my medical records; all my personal information is mine. Not society’s. Not society’s surrogate. I do not forfeit this unless I am convicted of a crime. In an individualist society, your personal feelings of insecurity and questionable value judgements do not make me a little less my own property.
I am confident that no enemies will destroy our defensive capacity on a first strike.
I am confident that no enemies will survive that first strike.
I am confident that the only nation strong enough to irretrievably harm us right now, is us.
I ask you, which one of us is really paranoid?
“I’ll sleep better knowing the Supreme Court thinks it’s all right.”
U.S. Supreme Court
SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/
Ah,
And I remember when all calls were placed by the operator, who could listen in and now and then would let us boys know we had been talking too long. As to privacy in the large sense, it is simply a matter of record keeping and collating the information. Now that more and more things are digitized — bills, credit cards, market purchases — it is easier to do that. No one who is aware of how much data passes through the wires with every modern transaction has believed in privacy for a long time. There ain’t no such thing, but it is no worse than strolling about town in the nude. What matters is not the privacy, it is what can be done about the information. This is hardly new in any case: it wasn’t like your neighbors in a small town didn’t know everything about you, it was that they generally felt no need to gather up the torches and run you out on a rail.
Gibson, of course, is an idiot. That’s why he moved to Vancouver in the first place. Nor does he know squat about technology, he is just another dime-a-dozen stylist. There ain’t hardly any other kind of writer these days.
Midwesterner, this is not arithmetic, it’s fact. Phone companies keep call logs for five years, then delete them. I was in the phone business for a couple of years as a buyer of phone time, and I know whereof I speak. But don’t take my word for it: ask anyone in authority at (say) AT&T. Some phone companies don’t even keep their logs as long as A&T does.
The plain fact is that the actual number data and call logs are not protected information — never have been.
This activity is only illegal in your mind (generically speaking).
As I said, there are some hills worth defending and dying for.
This, however, isn’t one of them.
And when it comes to fighting wars, I’m not only a pragmatist, I’m a ruthless pragmatist. I just look at the potential cost of not doing anything — and believe me, the non-criminal, non-4th-Amendment inspection of call logs is not only a prudent thing to do, it’s criminal not to do it.
Look, there’s always a trade-off between freedom and security, and the trickiest part is to decide where one anchors oneself on the slippery slope. But in this case, it’s a non-issue. There are way too many “coulds” and “mights”, and not a single “did” in all the wailing and breast-beating to worry anyone.
And as for the much-maligned Supreme Court decision referenced above, here’s a key opinion:
Just as the Post Office may retain your mailing address on your letters for their own purposes, the phone companies may retain your call logs.
Final summary: It’s not your data, and as such is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
All the wishing and wailing won’t change that immutable fact.
The content of the calls… ah, now that’s a different issue — and the NSA is NOT storing that data.
Oh, and one last thing: I know that Gibson is regarded of something as a God in the Dork Kingdom for having written Neuromancer and such, but that doesn’t mean he’s an authority on this particular issue.
Ah, Kim? I thought we were talking about the NSA. Once NSA has data, you trust that they will throw it away? Perhaps you’ve forgotten your original statement,
Which is just plain nuts. But I guess you’re backing away from that statement now.
Well, that certainly puts you in good company!
Just a guess, but you support CCTV on the exact same grounds?
You seem to be staking you case on that court decision. You even state “Final summary: It’s not your data, and as such is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.”
Yet there was substantial dissent in that court decision. Five justices supporting. But in the dissent, some important points were made. The following statements are taken from the dissenting justices opinions.
Kim, you can be pragmatic, or you can be principled. But you cannot be both. They are mutually exclusive.
“Yet there was substantial dissent in that court decision. Five justices supporting. But in the dissent, some important points were made.”
The minority opinion lost get over it unless you want to argue Roe v Wade.
jrdroll or jrtroll?,
This is a site where commenters are expected to think. To reason. Apparently an unfamiliar concept to you. You seem better cut out to be either a sycophant or a troll.
Your “The minority opinion lost get over it” can only be described as a landmark of intellectual achievement.
It became common knowledge among the technorati that the Echelon program agreement between the US and British intelligence arranged that Brits monitored all calls in the US, and the NSA monitored all calls in Britain, as a cover allowing each government to truthfully say that the were not spying on their own citizens.
As a couple of other people have mentioned here, I too, am not overly impressed with Gibson’s work…hardly prophetic and I’m not sure why he of all people was chosen to be a talking head on the matter.
Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age is working from a much clearer crystal ball.
Now, for something perhaps more relevant…were any of you subscribers to Reason when they sent out their “databases” issue a year or so ago? They targeted each subscriber and mailed him/her their normal copy with a picture of their residence, etc…all information compiled from publicly available (e.g. Google Maps, etc) databases. Nice stunt, eh?
“jrdroll or jrtroll?,”
Your concerns are trollish. I give you the relevant Supreme Court case you ignore it. Take a hike “liberal leftists” loon.
“Talking truth to KOOKS” commenting on the “Drive-by- Media””
Now, for a corollary thought. Some of my comp. engineering research inolves SNA (social network analysis). By observing phone numbers in conversations, it appears that the NSA is doing SNA (permuting acronoyms, oh no!) to find likely foreign or terror agents. This strikes me as something particularly effective and a way that they can concentrate limited resources in areas that are likely to be beneficial.
I won’t even go into whether or not this is legal…it almost certainly is, as per Kim. Is it moral? That’s another good question, I suppose. If instead we were searching for NAZIs or Communists, agents of well established states with the expressed intent on doing us harm…would it change anything?
Back to my prior Neal Stephenson quote…he has a few excellent (if brief) notes about the increasing power of weaponry and the nature of asymmetric warfare. This is the world we live in and we must accept it.
A bright flash, a whole lot of gamma rays and say San Diego turns into a stunningly beautiful, luminescent cloud of radioactive gas. Once upon a time, it was a short list of entities that could have accomplished this. Now, who catches our wrath? It would be so easy if it was the NoKos, Iran…but they’re not that stupid. They may have helped, but I’d wager my donut that it will be some transnational nasties. So again…who catches our wrath? A few caves and mudhuts in Pakistan? A warehouse in Mogadishu? How do we retaliate? Can we prevent this from happening at all?
These are the questions of our times.
Nate, you raise serious concerns. The way I personally address them is by prioritizing.
First, what exactly are we protecting? Because, if we lose it, then why bother?
Our ground in this battle is not geographical, it’s ideological. It’s our values. All these pragmatic ‘solutions’ are, is just conceding more and more ground. It’s harder work, and certainly will be more painful, but we must stand our ground. Giving away things that ten generations have taken for granted is like defending the Battle of Britain by falling back to Hadrian’s wall. It’s a terminal strategy.
We will no doubt take some more hits. The future is long, our enemies assaults will escalate as their technology and skills do. If our defense is to forfeit a little more every time in the name of security, what is the end game? We will be living in a totalitarian state. Game lost. Albeit with good, pragmatic intentions.
Refining uranium takes a lot of infrastructure. I have no doubt that if/when the next nuclear device explodes, we’ll know where it came from. If a Chinese or etc. nuclear device explodes here, it is an act of war, regardless of the method of delivery.
This whole fiasco started when Bush declared war on a method of combat called terrorism. Now, this reasoning is extending the war to be also against a method of weapons delivery.
We need to get serious about this, and this steady concession of our greatest values is half assed and ultimately doomed to failure. We will take some more hits from time to time. It is inevitable. I think the American people are stronger and more courageous than the government is. But after the results of that survey announced today, maybe not. It sounds like 2/3s of the population is quivering and saying ‘Take my rights, take my rights, just don’t hurt me!’
If we are attacked, it is by enemies, not by methods. Remember “guns don’t kill, people do”? All of our actions against methods of attack and delivery are pointing the fire extinguisher at the flames, not the fuel. We’re not half serious about this yet. It’s about time we are.
The use of telephone records to trace contacts of bad guys/gals is well known, and of some use.
However, the competent terrorist (and spy) would use some of the variously available untraceable outgoing phones, such as public callboxes and pay-as-you-go mobile phones (registered in false names, etc). Thus his/her work is made slightly more difficult, but not a lot more difficult.
What remains useful is tracing less competent or less careful terrorists (or spies) and the same in the criminal community.
More important is the protection offered against misuse of the data. For example by allowing it to “leak out” to private investigators looking into such things as infidelity.
To protect against such misuse, one needs laws to make it wrong (and hence laws to make right the right use). I understand that there might be something of a lack on this, but am not certain.
One also needs a sense of duty (here in the NSA) to enforce protection against misuse. On this, is there any evidence (ie cases of leaking data or other misuse) that such enforement is not happening or is not effective? If not, then we (or rather USA citizens) should be content on that aspect.
Best regards
Nigel, the following is a verbatim quote of a Supreme Court Justice dissenting in an official opinion published on the Supreme Court’s web site.
I don’t think infidelity is the concern here. I think it’s suppression of dissent.
Darn commie pinko leftists. Why do they have to be so obsessed with individual rights and liberty? BTW, Pat Robertson today, came out emphatically against this latest blanket phone record collecting. I guess he’s just another one of those leftist commie pinkoes.
@Midwesterner, who wrote: “I don’t think infidelity is the concern here. I think it’s suppression of dissent.”
OK, both. Though I would again call for differentiation between sensible law and the actual occurrence of the problem (so do post any info on occurrences).
On you quoting the Supreme Court ruling, including the minority dissenting comment, I found that most helpful. If no legislation has been passed to re-balance the law on these good points, that is a shame.
Best regards
D’ya mind if I raise a side issue? How effective is call-logging in combating terrorism? I’m curious because I don’t honestly see how it’s much use for that purpose. Seeing as the NSA are likely to retain this data indefintiely, God knows what they might do with it in the future.
I see this as yet another example of the peculiar position our governments have painted themselves into over the last few years. They have forgotten the importance of freedom and replaced it with “equality”. Keeping call records on everybody is clearly an example of this new authoritarian equality. This is now absolutely standard in law-enforcement. In Manchester, where I live, an enormous percentage of petty street crime is committed by hooded youths riding BMXs on the pavement but the cops aren’t supposed to target them for stop and search because they’re not supposed to target any particular group. We now have a concept or group rights, not individual rights. This is actually a category error and philosophically undefensible.
Should the spooks keep a look out for us (sometimes on us), yes but it should be targetted. Seeing as most terrorists are young-ish muslims it is laughable to subject little old ladies flying down to Boca Raton to invasive “random” security checks. When the first elderly Jewish woman blows their shoes up on a 767 we can perhaps revue that policy.
Nick, even if done to scientific perfection, I can’t imaging call logging is going to be much use at all when you consider the following, (quoted from the PDF).
As for your most telling observation, yes. We have become a society of pragmatic equalitarians. Remember before it exclusively applied to race when “discriminating” meant the ability to tell good from evil, quality from trash, beneficial from harmful?
Would that we now returned to leaders who meet the classical definitions of ‘discriminating’ and ‘principled’.
Nick, my reply to you was ‘held for approval’. I realize too late, that it contains one of the seven deadly words. Hopefully it will be cleared quickly. Oops.
Nigel, unfortunately, since the ‘Patriot’ Act, we will almost certainly never know. It is disingenious of Kim to suggest that we can.
We now have searches that must be approved simple because the agent says “This is important, I want to.”
We now have “sneak and peek” warrants executed that are never, ever reported.
We now have virtually free information sharing among the many diverse government agencies.
We now have court cases in which the prosecution does not have to jeopardize it’s sources by revealing them.
Unless these provisions of the Patriot Act and of other laws are reversed, your request cannot be honestly answered. All anybody can truthfully say is “The agencies haven’t voluntarily told us that they have abused it.”
(In the interest of maintaining continuity, I’ll try it again with changes. Eventually the duplicate may show up)
Nick, even if done to scientific perfection, I can’t imaging call logging is going to be much use at all when you consider the following, (quoted from the PDF).
As for your most telling observation, yes. We have become a society of pragmatic equalitarians. Remember before it exclusively applied to skin color when “discriminating” meant the ability to tell good from evil, quality from trash, beneficial from harmful?
Would that we now returned to leaders who meet the classical definitions of ‘discriminating’ and ‘principled’.
Midwesterner wrote: “Would that we now returned to leaders who meet the classical definitions of ‘discriminating’ and ‘principled’.”
I’m for that.
My words are “judgement” and “integrity”.
I’d also put in a plea for acceptance of a bit of imperfection, but not too much. Another issue of judgement.
Best regards
If we are attacked, it is by enemies, not by methods. Remember “guns don’t kill, people do”? All of our actions against methods of attack and delivery are pointing the fire extinguisher at the flames, not the fuel. We’re not half serious about this yet. It’s about time we are.
Being myself a midwesterner, I’d like to point out is that what we are debating here is the merits of a technique for identifying where to point the fire extinguisher.
It bothers me to think the NSA knows that I’ve made 23 calls to 1-800-GAY-STUD. If this ever got out, my life as a confident heterosexual would be ruined.
Triticale, all it will find us is the delivery method. Our true enemies are not suicidal martyrs. Our enemies are the civilizations and belief systems that send them to us.
Charlie,
Sorry to spoil your weekend, but it ain’t just the NSA that now knows your erm… “habits”. You’ve just posted it on a blog read by 20000 people per day 😉
What essentially scares me from a practical point of view is that the government (and not just the government – they invariably have some large corporations in tow) has the political capital (post 9/11) to gather, process and store information on all of us by dragging up the bugbear of security. OK you might say – legitimate use – none of us want another terror attack like that… But what else might they want to use it for?
I’m not even going to speculate on the possibilities. I leave it to your imagination.
Midwesterner,
Thanks for your kind comments. I’m glad you picked up on my “most telling comment”. It is something I’ve thought for years. For me the sovereign right of the individual is the core of classical liberalism. It is anathema to government which has an unerring knack of divvying up the population by race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, dog ownership, internet access… It is this tyranny of statistics that I really object to. That and it’s obvious corrollary that if it is found that one particular group within society is “discriminated” against the whole of that, artificially designated group ought to receive some kinda government “boost”. That doesn’t wash with me. I’m the first to be against discrimination, but discrimination against indviduals is what I object to. Artificially designated groups can, as I see it, only ever have artificially designated “rights”.
I know a guy who has a severe disability (cerebral palsy). Because he slurs and is clumsy he is discriminated against on the street because people think he’s drunk. I object to this because it is unfair. But I also object to the fact that because he ticks the category box he receives generous handouts from HMGov. I object to that, not least, because he earns considerably more than I do. Dominic himself has never quite figured out why the government gives him a new car every year. He’s actually, privately, rather embarrassed about it – not that he’s gonna look a gift-horse in the mouth. I wouldn’t either.
BTW, what are the “seven deadly words”. I’ve had comments held for “smite control” recently and it just seemed random to me.
Midwesterner,
You’re arguing principle, I’m arguing wartime pragmatism.
It’s like saying that a person who passes secrets on to a foreign enemy is protected from prosecution by the First Amendment — of course he isn’t, and even the Founding Fathers recognized that fact by mentioning “treason” by name.
Your entire argument is based on an extension of the above, coupled with a worrying precautionary principle — “might”, “could”, “may” and so on.
My point is that the collection of phone records by the NSA is a minor thing — not something to get exercised about.
And as for the junking of old data — and I’m not backing away from anything — of course the phone companies ditch it, because they have no need for it after a certain number of years. Most especially, this happens because they “recycle” phone numbers, after which the records are to all intents and purposes useless at that point.
The NSA will most likely also ditch the numbers on that basis as well (albeit after a more lengthy period), unless they want to go to the hassle of incorporating a control digit after each numbers to create a generational marker.
But these are minutiae. The major point of difference is that you think the .gov should have no right of enquiry into individual behavior (even when the facts they pursue are adjudged not to be worthy of protection), and I think it’s no big deal.
Let history be the judge of our respective positions. If, as a result of this particular activity, innocent people are sent to the gulag because of NSA data collection, I’ll cry mea maxima culpa, as I go for the guns.
If nothing bad ever comes of this, and future terrorist attacks are prevented and scumbags arrested/killed, I’ll be vindicated.
Deal?
Kim,
I think Midwesterner’s point here is that given the nature of this war we’re not gonna win by “pragmatism”. I think his idea (and I agree) with it is that we’re only gonna win this war by showing that Western, liberal (and I’m reclaiming that word from the lefties) ideology is better than tyranny, beheading and the general insanity of much of the Islamic World. This is a fundamentally ideological struggle.
Trying to win it by bombing the buggers is only ever going to have a limited effect.
We won’t win this war. The Islamoloons will lose it. They’ll lose because the vast majority of people of every creed and race desire a better material existence in this life. Blowing yourself and others up is one hell of a test of faith. For good or ill very few people have that level of faith. Especially when a reasonably large number of the most respected commentators on any given religion (including Islam) think it’s a bad thing.
It’s gonna be a long haul but the enemy will lose this one when they increasingly have to confront the question: “Has anything me or my comrades done in this jihad increased the happiness of any of my people?”
We certainly wont win by carrying on how we’re going. Bush and Blair keep on repeating this is “a war on terrorism, not Islam, a religion of peace”. A war on “terrorism” is a very odd concept. Jason Burke in his excellent book on Al Quaida say it makes no sense whatsoever because “terrorism” is a tactic, not an end. Fighting a war against a specific military tactic is therefore nonsensical. What we should be doing (but are too scared of being seen as being “racist”) is fighting a war of ideas against some of the specifics of Islam. To engage in an ideological battle here without pointing out the blindingly obvious fact that Islam is several hundred years out of kilter with the Western mainstream (and that, afterall, is a major reason we are at war in the first place) is to ask our soldiers to die in a battle in a parallel universe.
Kim, I’m serious when I say I hope we’re both on the same side. Your tactical clarity and intensity is well known and respected. Tactical perfection can save some pretty bad strategic plans, but I don’t think it can save this one.
We are under attack by a belief system that can draw from a billion or more potential recruits. Trying to spot each one individually is dubious in the short term, and will impossible in the present or very near future. One might as well defend against individual bullets from a machine gun. We will be paralyzed by our own defenses. We need to address the source. We need to take this conflict to it’s source. Perhaps this is not yet generally acceptable, but I think it is. One need only look at world response re Afghanistan.
We are going to take some hits. Building this data stockpiling Maginot Line is a pointless, paralyzing and resource tapping endeavor that gives false security. We don’t even use what we have. Forget drawing inferences from data, we had detailed maps and plans for the first world trade center bombing in hand before it happened!
Nuts, I have a full day today and won’t be back until late afternoon or evening central time. I’m already late. This subject we are discussing matters a lot or I wouldn’t be pursuing it so vigorously. I’ll check in again this evening and try to express myself more clearly. Thank you for your thoughtful response.
Kim,
The principle here is vital. What is this war about? And who are our enemies? Spotting enemy soldiers is not the same as knowing your enemies. These kinds of domestic (and some foreign) surveillance programs are just a way to find the street corner dealers of terrorism.
No. It is saying that a person who is a law abiding citizen with no probable cause to suspect him, is protected from being criminally investigated. And for the “might”, “could”, “may” it is something we cannot (legally not constitutionally), ever know. Since the “Patriot” Act,
â—We now have searches that must be approved simple because the agent says “This is important, I want to.”
â—We now have “sneak and peek” warrants executed that are never, ever reported.
â—We now have virtually free information sharing among the many diverse government agencies.
â—We now have court cases in which the prosecution does not have to jeopardize it’s sources by revealing them.
Back in my programming days, which go back about 25 years, I automatically ‘stamped’ all records I created with a unique identifier. The nature of the beast is that it is functionally required for data retrieval, so I usually made it meaningful in addition to being merely unique. Often some variation of date/sequence# or date/time. Since we are talking phone records here, I am certain the records contain date and time stamps unless they are specifically stripped from the data prior to storage and replaced with an invented number. It would also be essential for data modeling to have times. It a given that phone number directory information will be archived with dates. All of this is in a data base and this is the kind of name look up program that I was expected to cough out in less than an hour. Including the delay waiting for compiler time. It is essential and only reasonable to assume this information is completely and usably archived for ‘ever’.
Yes. But for that “adjudged not to be worthy of protection”, as I read the court’s decision, that interpretation was based on the grounds that the person “voluntarily” releases that information to a third party. “Voluntarily” is bogus, and the dissenting judge’s opinions said so. I personally know of no functional adult who is able to exist without using a phone. Even my deaf friends dial numbers and use keyboards to ‘talk’. For this to be a “voluntary” sharing, one has to assume that it is possible to exist in today’s society without using a phone. How long can you carry on your life without ‘volunteering’ to give this information to a third party?
Kim, unfortunately, that isn’t the failure mode. They way it works is not that some will be put into a gulag. What happens is that the gulag settles over all of us. It’s the old ‘two frogs and a kettle of water’ parable.
No. ‘and all future attacks are prevented’. But that can’t be. It’s a Maginot line. It will be breached or circumvented. We should recognize that, stop barricading ourselves in our castle thinking we can lock out the Red Death, and return this gift that keeps on killing to the sender.
These people have substantial mainstream support throughout the Muslim world. We need to take this conflict back to them. Only when they are held accountable for what and who they support, will anything change. Since we cannot and should not initiate attacks, we have to make sure the consequences are great enough when we are attacked that it becomes a religious and political Darwin thing.
Okay, for a break from the usual “scary wiretapping bad” versus “we trust the government”, hows about any other ancaps out there suggest how a government-less society would handle this particular war?
Would a well-armed citizenry be sufficient disincentive to terrorism, that the very question wouldn’t arise? (Note: a suicide terrorist may not be scared to die, but he wouldn’t want to be cut down in a hail of bullets before he gets to do anything destructive. That would ruin his martyrdom.)
I don’t support anarchy, rather a more minarchist form, but…
Think Iran hostage crisis. Not the one the US gov botched. The other one. The one H Ross Perot didn’t botch. Granted, he only rescued two and the USG failed to rescue many more than that. But dollar for dollar, he did alright.
I think specifically in regard to terrorism, an all volunteer militia would retaliate (to the sponsers) in such a way as to make the likelyhood of a second attack substantially less likely. I imagine if it stretched to as many as four incidents, the attacking countries/cultures would begin to run into significant staffing/personnel shortages by virtue of said militia’s actions.
And yes. A well armed citizenry has proved very effective in Israel.
It’s certainly true that Israel takes 1000 times as much crap as anywhere else from terrorists and yet seems to soldier on regardless, with neither a hyper-intrusive state nor a breakdown in civil society. So they’re obviously doing something right.
In reference to this subject, Newt Gingrich this morning refers to libertarians wanting to trade a city for liberty. I hope nobody thinks that is what I am advocating.
Several points,
We will suffer attacks. It is fantasy to think otherwise.
Our defense establishment is routinely paralyzed with excess information.
Our enemies are ‘the forest’. Their soldiers are only ‘trees’. Keep perspective.
We should stop trying to identify and stop each shotgun pellet.
We should spend that effort on whomever controls the trigger.
These trigger-pullers have repeatedly, publicly stated their goals and intentions. It does not take a clever intelligence establishment to read public statements. It apparently does take clever leadership to believe them.
(Am I using too many metaphors?)
What I am saying is that these comprehensive sweeps are, in addition to my previous statements on this thread, detrimental to our security.
We need to –
A. Name what is our most valuable possession.
B. Name what it is that the terrorists want to destroy.
C. Defend ‘A’
D. Don’t assist them with ‘B’.
I believe that our most valuable possession is our recognition of individual identity.
I believe the terrorists’ goals are two fold,
First, they want to destroy the individualist protections and character of our society because,
only after the society can be controlled, can they hope to be the controllers.
People who think we are in a war on “terror” don’t really have a clue as to why we are being attacked, or for that matter, even what it is that is actually under attack. We need to enlighten them and if they will not be enlightened, then we need to replace them.
In regard to ‘pen’ files. This whole plan at it’s most pragmatically successful is cumbersome, time inadequate, resource squandering, distracting and all of the philosophical errors discussed already.
So what could we be doing in this field that is none of the above?
Every time we identify a number of a suspected terrorist, routinely establish legal probable cause to track that number in the US. (We already can, outside the US) Put it on a watch list kept by all phone companies; they are already prequalifying numbers for other reasons like valid billing, etc. This will actually be easier and quicker than data mining.
When a ‘hot’ number is detected transiting a US exchange, log everything about the call. Perhaps even monitor it. Because probable cause has been established. In any cases deriving from information gathered in this process, probable cause should be reevaluated as part of the legal defense process.
This method eliminates the billions of phone usages for which the government’s knowledge has no lawful use. Plus, it has the added benefit of putting terrorist activity detection into real time, not this pathetic archaeological reconstruction that gave us the World Trade Center’s first bombing after we had full and detailed plans for the attack lost somewhere in our sprawling realms of information.
Our government’s biggest (non-HumInt) intelligence problem in the last century has not been inadequate information, it has been recognizing and acting on the valuable information that it has. This sprawling data stockpiling and massaging of pen files scheme only makes this problem worse.
Midwestener wrote: “When a ‘hot’ number is detected transiting a US exchange, log everything about the call. Perhaps even monitor it. Because probable cause has been established.”
This surely is done already.
The issue in the current thread is whether there is a balance of benefit in logging, for retrospective access, every case of who called whom (though not what they said).
Consider the case of a new phone number being added to the ‘hot’ list. There is possible useful information in calls made from/to that number prior to the point of it going ‘hot’. Thus there is potential benefit in keeping the historical information of all calls.
The questions are: (i) is it worth it, as competent bad guys/gals (who are not having an off day) will take the sorts of precautions we all know about from John Le Carre novels and Hollywood and other films; (ii) what protections are there against misuse; (iii) who (ie executive government agency or judges) enforces/supervises the protection against misuse.
Best regards
This information is already available with a suppoena. As Kim points out, telcos keep that information for five years.
Err… “subpoena”.
Midwestener wrote: “This information is already available with a subpoena. As Kim points out, telcos keep that information for five years.”
So you opt for (iii) in my list.
At this time, I’m not taking sides. However, with the subpoena route, I would note some other points: (i) timeliness; (ii) risk of exposure of interest; (iii) expensive procedures to protect against ‘ii’.
At this point, I recollect that there is some special procedure within the USA for wiretaps relating to terrorism (and perhaps to organised crime). Is there any chance Midwestener might tell us about that, with the good accuracy and brevity he normally brings to such things.
Best regards
I wrote: “So you opt for (iii) in my list.”
Just in case guessing is too hard, what I meant was: “Concerning (iii) in my list, Midwestener opts for the judges.”
Best regards
That actually is how our balance of powers was established to work.
And when I hear “We’re at war, we need war powers.”, I want us to declare war on an enemy, not a method. Terrorism will never be defeated. So what they are asking (quite cleverly) for, is a permanent suspension of the constitution.
Perhaps you are referring to the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” which has been construed by this administration to allow the NSA to perform warrantless searches including electronic ones.
I quote the following from wikipedia–
The “Patriot” Act invented the new category of “Domestic Terrorism” which, when combined with the war powers, appears to have had the effect of extending war powers to US citizens. This should not come as to big a surprise when we remember that US citizens have lost constitutional protections unless the government chooses to permit them. Exampled by José Padilla. US citizen, born in Brooklyn, New York, arrested in Chicago, Illinois, held for three years without access to his lawyer or his family.
The procedure seem to be summarizable as ‘good people doing nothing.’
By way of definition to non US readers, I should explain that “probable cause” is a specific legal term.
The fourth amendment to the US Constitution –
Courts determine if “probable cause” exists at the time a request for a warrant is approved.
Thanks to Midwestener for pointing me in the right direction, through the Wikipedia article (rather long).
The thing I was struggling to find was FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Court). I thought that the procedures of that special court might be useful. In particular, I was thinking that a USA-based phone number being entered onto the ‘hot’ list for phone surveillence might be something that that a special court of that sort could be responsible for approving, including the allowance for retrospective approval within 72 hours (which facilitates timely action by appropriate executive agencies).
[As an aside, I note that the whole thing is a lawyer-infested mess, which probably makes very difficult to do anything useful. Also, the case of José Padilla strikes me as widening the issue too much (at least for me here).]
So, going back to my original 3 questions:
The questions are: (i) is it worth it, as competent bad guys/gals (who are not having an off day) will take the sorts of precautions we all know about from John Le Carre novels and Hollywood and other films; (ii) what protections are there against misuse; (iii) who (ie executive government agency or judges) enforces/supervises the protection against misuse.
I’ll also repeat my other points (relabelling as a,b,c to avoid confusion):
At this time, I’m not taking sides. However, with the subpoena route, I would note some other points: (a) timeliness; (b) risk of exposure of interest; (c) expensive procedures to protect against ‘b’.
We seem to be discussing the detail of (ii); and also (iii) perhaps on the assumption that there should be more judicial oversight than at present.
I don’t particularly want to force words into anyone’s mouth, but is there general agreement, eg considering (i), that it is actually useful to have available the retrospective information on phone connections?
Best regards
We had two acts, Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists , Public law 107-40,
which, curiously enough, authorizes military force and the war powers that are incumbent with it to fight terrorism.
And the USA PATRIOT ACT (Public Law 107-56), which in section 802 of the Act, created the new crime category of “domestic terrorism.”
These two acts combine (in the interpretation of the president) to place activities that previously were subject to our constitutional US criminal legal system, into jurisdiction of the apparatus of war.
And, combined with the never ending status of a war on terror, effectively results in a perpetual state of martial law.
Since the congress states emphatically that they never intended this interpretation, I don’t think it should be accepted by the Supreme Court. And since it obviates the need and jurisdiction of the legal system in any case where the Executive branch claims power, I don’t think the SC will uphold it.
Oh, darn. There must be a deadly word I don’t know of. My comment’s been held again.
Watch this spot.
Nigel,
In regard to questions i, ii, iii, are we talking about PEN register? If we are, then no, it’s more harm than good. It’s a giant bureaucracy engaged in data mining. Compliance with FISC would cover ii and iii. But the “F” in “FISC” stands for foreign. (I sure hope my comment above this one turns up soon.)
Regarding “a”, “b” and “c”: “a”, Timeliness is not a factor. Remember, in this method everything is stockpiled regardless of worth and then run through evaluation programs to determine if their may be suspicious patterns. President’s claims aside, this is strictly a method of data mining. It is done after the fact. This isn’t tracing hot leads. As you correctly surmised, that is well covered. This is a method of looking for patterns in data that may suggest possibly suspicious activity. As for “b” and “c”, complying with the FISC statute would be nice.
Midwestener wrote: “In regard to questions i, ii, iii, are we talking about PEN register? ”
Yes, that’s the (single) issue I’m addressing.
Midwestener wrote: “If we are, then no, it’s more harm than good. It’s a giant bureaucracy engaged in data mining.”
And he wrote: “Regarding “a”, “b” and “c”: “a”, Timeliness is not a factor. Remember, in this method everything is stockpiled regardless of worth and then run through evaluation programs to determine if their may be suspicious patterns. President’s claims aside, this is strictly a method of data mining. It is done after the fact. This isn’t tracing hot leads.”
I’m trying to do a useful analysis here, but accept it is getting a bit lengthy and complicated.
Concerning data mining from “pen lists”, such expertise as I have in this makes me somewhat sceptical but not dismissive of the benefit. [As with biometrics for national identity cards, it’s a grey issue, with estimation of costs and benefits being both important and difficult. That is different from the civil liberties aspects, which are also very important.]
Concerning the benefit of adding a phone number to the ‘hot’ list (from information in retrospective data), because of some other phone number (linked to it) having just been added to the ‘hot’ list, I think this is a separate issue from data mining.
Extending the ‘hot’ list strikes me (at my current state of knowledge) as more clearly beneficial than is data mining.
Also, the timeliness of adding phone numbers to the ‘hot’ list strikes me as perhaps very important. Numbers on the ‘hot’ list are likely to have calls recorded, which might provide very useful intelligence. Missing such intelligence for, say, 2 days could make the difference to thwarting or not, a terrorist attack.
Concerning a FISC-like (retrospective and domestic) authorisation procedure, I’m glad that both Midwestener and I see some civil liberties benefit in that. Despite the inconvenience to the executive, perhaps such protections are one of the things that differentiate dictatorships from the sort of government we prefer.
Best regards
Tue May 16, 6:40 AM ET
‘USA TODAY’s assertion that the National Security Agency database has set off a furor is overblown rhetoric, to say the least (“Furor erupts over NSA’s secret phone database,” Cover story, News, Friday). The majority of Americans understand that we are in a war. A war unlike any that we have had to fight. And we are having to employ tactics that are different from those we used in the past. ‘
The war is the excuse at USA Today. Who started the war? The NSA memo leaks are the same as all the others. Plame got mad and sold WMD right after the war started. USA Today seems to have the same motivation and maybe the same war.