[Vision2020] Intelligence for Dummies

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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June 7, 2013
Intelligence for Dummies By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

Question for the day: Do you feel more secure or less secure, now that you
know the government is keeping a gargantuan pile of information about
everybody’s telephone calls in the name of national security?

You have heard, I’m sure, that the National Security Agency has been mining
Verizon’s records for information, such as numbers called and the location
where the call was made. This is known as “telephony metadata,” and the
very fact that we now have a term like “telephony metadata” is perhaps
reason enough to be against the entire concept.

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Obama assured the
American people on Friday. Well, probably nobody. And, if they are, it’s
under an entirely different part of the program.

We’ve had a passel of these stories this week. (It also appears that the
N.S.A. is sucking personal e-mails and other data from the servers of the
giant Internet companies.) Security issues are very tough to figure out.
One side is always saying, as Obama did on Friday, that whatever is going
on will “help us prevent terrorist attacks.”

The phrase “help us prevent terrorist attacks” is sort of a
conversation-stopper.

The other side is worried about privacy, but the public is resigned to the
idea that some Big Brother is monitoring their communications. After all,
we live in a world where you can e-mail your husband about buying new
kitchen curtains and then magically receive an online ad from a drapery
company.

Let’s start with the real basics. Does the N.S.A. really need all the stuff
it’s collecting? Ever since the attack on the World Trade Center, the
agency has been exploding. It has an enormous operation outside of
Washington, and it is building another million-square-foot complex in the
Utah desert. It collects an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of communication a
day.

“When you have the ability to get more and more data, the natural
inclination is to get as much as possible,” said Representative Henry
Waxman, the former chairman of the House oversight committee.

Those of us who have seen the show “Hoarders” know that more is not always
better, and “as much as possible” is sometimes covering up a pile of dead
cats. After all, the government didn’t fail to stop the attack on the World
Trade Center because of a lack of data. It had lots of information about Al
Qaeda and its plan to stage an attack on America. The problem was with
follow-up.

And the N.S.A. has been known to go overboard. During the administration of
George W. Bush, it decided to drop a modest in-house plan for data analysis
in favor of a gargantuan program called Trailblazer, which funneled more
than $1 billion to private consultants and turned out to have the
additional liability of not working. The official who fought most
vigorously against it was rewarded in 2010 by being charged with violating
the Espionage Act when he released information to a reporter.

That was only one incident, but we do seem to have an ominous combination:
an agency with a bad record on thriftiness, and practically everything it
spends money on is secret. “It’s a tough balancing act,” an Obama
administration official told me. “It’s incumbent on us and Congress to do
the job of scrutinizing the budget, both in terms of cost and efficacy.”

Yeah, what about Congress? The president keeps saying that “Congress is
continually briefed” about security issues. In reality, the briefing is
pretty much confined to the members of the House and Senate intelligence
committees, who are sworn to secrecy. Many of them also have a longstanding
record of being in the pocket of the intelligence community. A few of the
others had been desperately trying to warn their colleagues about the
telephone-call program without breaking their vow of silence. Senator Ron
Wyden of Oregon did everything but tap dance the information in Morse code.

“Does the N.S.A. collect *any type of data at all* on millions or hundreds
of millions of Americans?” he asked James Clapper, the director of national
intelligence, at a public hearing.

“No sir,” said Clapper.

I wouldn’t rely on Congress to keep things under control. It’s really up to
the president. As a candidate, Obama looked as if he would be great at
riding herd on the N.S.A.’s excesses. But if he has ever seriously pushed
back on the spy set, it’s been kept a secret. Meanwhile, the administration
scarfs up reporters’ e-mails and phone records in its obsessive war against
leaks.

And without the leaks to reporters, we would never be having discussions
about whether it’s a good idea for the government to collect piles of
records about our telephone calls every day.

“I welcome this debate,” Obama said Friday. “I think it’s healthy for our
democracy.” Under further questioning, he said that he definitely didn’t
welcome the leaks. Without which, of course, there would be no debate.

Do you remember how enthusiastic people were about having a president who
once taught constitutional law? I guess we’ve learned a lesson.




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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