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<div class="">August 3, 2013</div>
<h1>Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lichtblau/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by ERIC LICHTBLAU"><span>ERIC LICHTBLAU</span></a></span> and <span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/michael_s_schmidt/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT"><span>MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
WASHINGTON — The <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about National Security Agency, U.S." class="">National Security Agency</a>’s
dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent
tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that
want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations,
officials say. </p>
<p>
Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money
laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that
their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have
often been turned down because their own investigations are not
considered a high enough priority, current and former government
officials say. </p>
<p>
Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of
the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear
they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.
</p>
<p>
The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor
Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance
operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk
of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community
has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated
officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used
widely enough. </p>
<p>
“It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A.,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a
former senior intelligence official at the White House and at the office
of the director of national intelligence. “They collect all this
information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to
what they want.” </p>
<p>
“The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar,
who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to
become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. —
incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if
they were just able to pry it out of them.” </p>
<p>
Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/homeland_security_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Homeland Security Department." class="">Department of Homeland Security</a>
have sometimes been given access to the security agency’s surveillance
tools for particular cases, intelligence officials say. </p>
<p>
But more often, their requests have been rejected because the links to
terrorism or foreign intelligence, usually required by law or policy,
are considered tenuous. Officials at some agencies see another motive —
protecting the security agency’s turf — and have grown resentful over
what they see as a second-tier status that has undermined their own
investigations into security matters. </p>
<p>
At the drug agency, for example, officials complained that they were
blocked from using the security agency’s surveillance tools for several
drug-trafficking cases in Latin America, which they said might be
connected to financing terrorist groups in the Middle East and
elsewhere. </p>
<p>
At the Homeland Security Department, officials have repeatedly sought to
use the security agency’s Internet and telephone databases and other
resources to trace cyberattacks on American targets that are believed to
have stemmed from China, Russia and Eastern Europe, according to
officials. They have often been rebuffed. </p>
<p>
Officials at the other agencies, speaking only on the condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the tensions, say
the National Security Agency’s reluctance to allow access to data has
been particularly frustrating because of post-Sept. 11 measures that
were intended to encourage information-sharing among federal agencies.
</p>
<p>
In fact, a change made in 2008 in the executive order governing
intelligence was intended to make it easier for the security agency to
share surveillance information with other agencies if it was considered
“relevant” to their own investigations. It has often been left to the
national intelligence director’s office to referee the frequent disputes
over how and when the security agency’s spy tools can be used. The
director’s office declined to comment for this article. </p>
<p>
Typically, the agencies request that the N.S.A. target individuals or
groups for surveillance, search its databases for information about
them, or share raw intelligence, rather than edited summaries, with
them. If those under scrutiny are Americans, approval from the secret
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is required. </p>
<p>
The security agency, whose mission is to spy overseas, and the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Federal Bureau of Investigation." class="">F.B.I.</a>,
its main partner in surveillance operations, dominate the process as
the Justice Department’s main “customers” in seeking warrants from the
intelligence court, with nearly 1,800 approved by the court last year.
</p>
<p>
In a statement, the security agency said that it “works closely with all
intelligence community partners, and embeds liaison officers and other
personnel at those agencies for the express purpose of ensuring N.S.A.
is meeting their requirements and providing support to their missions.”
</p>
<p>
The security agency’s spy tools are attractive to other agencies for
many reasons. Unlike traditional, narrowly tailored search warrants,
those granted by the intelligence court often allow searches through
records and data that are vast in scope. The standard of evidence needed
to acquire them may be lower than in other courts, and the government
may not be required to disclose for years, if ever, that someone was the
focus of secret surveillance operations. </p>
<p>
Decisions on using the security agency’s powers rest on many complicated
variables, including a link to terrorism or “foreign intelligence,” the
type of surveillance or data collection that is being conducted, the
involvement of American targets, and the priority of the issue. </p>
<p>
“Every agency wants to think that their mission has to be the highest
priority,” said a former senior White House intelligence official
involved in recent turf issues. </p>
<p>
Other intelligence shops usually have quick access to N.S.A. tools and
data on pressing matters of national security, like investigating a
terrorism threat, planning battlefield operations or providing security
for a presidential trip, officials say. But the conflicts arise during
longer-term investigations with unclear foreign connections. </p>
<p>
In pressing for greater access, a number of smaller agencies maintain
that their cases involve legitimate national security threats and could
be helped significantly by the N.S.A.’s ability to trace e-mails and
Internet activity or other tools. </p>
<p>
Drug agency officials, for instance, have sought a higher place for
global drug trafficking on the intelligence community’s classified list
of surveillance priorities, according to two officials. </p>
<p>
Dawn Dearden, a drug agency spokeswoman, said it was comfortable
allowing the N.S.A. and the F.B.I. to take the lead in seeking
surveillance warrants. “We don’t have the authority, and we don’t want
it, and that comes from the top down,” she said. </p>
<p>
But privately, intelligence officials at the drug agency and elsewhere
have complained that they feel shut out of the process by the N.S.A. and
the F.B.I. from start to finish, with little input on what groups are
targeted with surveillance and only sporadic access to the classified
material that is ultimately collected. </p>
<p>
Sometimes, security agency and bureau officials accuse the smaller
agencies of exaggerating links to national security threats in their own
cases when pushing for access to the security agency’s surveillance
capabilities. Officials from the other agencies say that if a link to
national security is considered legitimate, the F.B.I. will at times
simply take over the case itself and work it with the N.S.A. </p>
<p>
In one such case, the bureau took control of a Secret Service
investigation after a hacker was linked to a foreign government, one law
enforcement official said. Similarly, the bureau became more interested
in investigating smuggled cigarettes as a means of financing terrorist
groups after the case was developed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives. </p>
<p>
Mr. Edgar said officials in the national intelligence director’s office
occasionally allow other agencies a role in identifying surveillance
targets and seeing the results when it is relevant to their own
inquiries. But more often, he acknowledged, the office has come down on
the side of keeping the process held to an “exclusive club” at the
N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, with help from the
Central Intelligence Agency on foreign issues. </p>
<p>
Officials in the national intelligence director’s office worry about
opening the surveillance too widely beyond the security agency and the
F.B.I. for fear of abuse, Mr. Edgar said. The two intelligence giants
have been “burned” by past wiretapping controversies and know the
political consequences if they venture too far afield, he added. </p>
<p>
“I would have been very uncomfortable if we had let these other agencies get access to the raw N.S.A. data,” he said. </p>
<p>
As furious as the public criticism of the security agency’s programs has
been in the two months since Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, “it could have
been much, much worse, if we had let these other agencies loose and we
had real abuses,” Mr. Edgar said. “That was the nightmare scenario we
were worried about, and that hasn’t happened.” </p>
<div class="">
<p>Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
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