There’s nothing even remotely illegal or questionable about the NSA database of anonymous phone number relationships [see below]. But why is it useful?
Consider this, the database is comprised of pairs of phone numbers [number 1 called number 2]. Now suppose an investigation of a suspected terrorist yields a phone number, or a set of numbers – perhaps from a cellphone. A query of the number-pairs database quickly yields all phone numbers related to the suspect-set of numbers. Not just the first level numbers that were directly connected to one of the suspect-set, but all of the phone numbers that are related [i.e., called, connected] to the first level numbers, etc.
If investigators knew who each of those phone numbers belonged to, and the details of activity on each number [time of call, physical address, etc.], that might just lead to identifying other members of the suspect’s terrorist network. But access to that personal information requires a search warrant – which the investigators may now have sufficient evidence to justify.
To reiterate: no names or any other personal data are associated with the NSA database obtained from the telecoms. To reiterate: there is NO Big Brother activity here, just sensible use of modern technology to keep Americans safe.
The Wall Street Journal has more on the politics and the legal issues:
The Bush Administration’s Big Brother operation is at it again–or so media reports and Democrats this week would have us believe. We suspect, however, that this political tempest will founder on the good sense of the American people much like the earlier one did.
Last December, the New York Times reported that after 9/11 the National Security Agency began listening to overseas phone calls of suspected terrorists, including calls placed from or received inside the U.S. This was supposed be a scandal because the tapping was done without a warrant from something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But as the debate wore on, it became clear that the 1978 FISA statute didn’t block a President’s power to allow such national-security wiretaps, and that most Americans expected their government to eavesdrop on terror suspects.
Now comes a sensationalist USA Today front-pager suggesting an even larger scandal. The government is “amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans–most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime.” Worse, reporter Leslie Cauley writes, while President Bush had suggested after the wiretapping story that “domestic call records” (her words) were still private, we now know that’s “not the case.”
Democrats are outraged, or at least they pretend to be. And major papers have joined the chorus, with the Washington Post calling the newly reported program a “massive intrusion on personal privacy.” We’re prepared to be outraged, too, if somebody would first bother to explain in detail what the problem is.
[...]
Most Americans seem to be cooler customers, or perhaps they can sort substance from mere political opportunism. After all, even most of the Democratic critics of datamining don’t say they’d stop it. They just want to see it “investigated” and supervised–by them and their fellows in Congress, so they can pound away at the President without having to take responsibility for keeping America safe.
Perhaps Americans outside Washington understand that it’s probably not an accident that the homeland hasn’t been attacked again since 9/11, and that maybe–just maybe–the aggressive surveillance policies of the Bush Administration are one reason.
Technorati Tags: Datamining
Recent Comments