We don't need Orwell any longer

Classic Big Brotherly spookthink:

[Sen.] Wyden repeatedly asked the NSA to estimate the number of Americans whose communications had been incidentally collected, and the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, insisted there was no way to find out. Eventually Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote Wyden a letter stating that it would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks to try to estimate their number (italics added).

That was a joke, right? Please tell us that was a joke, and not authentic NSA reasoning.

***

postimaginaryscript:

Sen. Wyden: "You mean to tell me there's no known average number of phone lines per American? And the phone companies you spy on haven't a clue as to the average number of calls made per line? All I want is an estimate."

I.G. McCullough: "Senator, do you really think we're going to hand you a number to attach to our activities? If I give you an estimate, let's say, 30 million, you'd go ballistic. If I revised it downward and said, Well, maybe only 20 million, then you'd just as ballistically retort: 'Only 20 million?' No, Senator, estimates--which my army of mathematicians could provide me--are merely a trap, for us. Our feigned ignorance shall keep us free."

Still, it seems to me that the point of the original, actual script is the comic irony, which the Washington Post delivered perfectly: deadpan.

Comments

[Peter G]

Oh no I'd say their reasoning is sound. They are collecting metadata divorced from who's phone number they are collecting. How many numbers do you have? Including business lines I have seven and two cell numbers. Without attaching personal information to the phone numbers they couldn't really know how many individual's numbers have been collected. How many are business numbers and how many belong to persons? How many are pay phones? If they are doing what they are saying there would be no way of knowing.

[wtf]

Peter G--

Did you read the post? The NSA's statement was not that they couldn't estimate but that doing so "would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks." Classic stonewalling. They can't answer a Senator's basic questions about their potential massive privacy violations because it would be violating privacy? Laughable. And of a piece with Clapper's statement to Wyden:

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.

In response, Clapper replied quickly: “No, sir.”

“There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect [intelligence on Americans], but not wittingly,” the U.S. intelligence chief told Wyden and the rest of the committee.

I guess it depends upon what the definition of "no" is.

Some transparency the Constitutional law professor's administration's got going there. To quote a usual cheerleader, "no credibility."

[Chris Andersen]

As I've said in the comments of other posts, I work in data analysis and I think Peter G essentially has the gist of it. In order to determine what percentage of people had their privacy violated you would have to actually attach personal information to the collected data. But doing so *is* a violation of privacy that requires a court order. So, in order to answer Wyden's question, the NSA would have to ask the FISA court to do so. But the FISA court can't give permission to do analysis and/or processing of the data unless there is a specific case of potential terrorism being investigated.

It's a bit of a catch-22, admittedly, but it really is a case of having to break something in order to determine if it has been broken.

[Peter G]

I suppose they could compromise just some people's personal information to create a sample big enough to estimate the number of people overall who's metadata has been collected WTF. But that's what they are forbidden to do. I think I've got a pretty clear understanding of the issue. I am not sure you do though.

[Robert Lipscomb]

@Chris and @PeterG: Please stop interrupting PM's rants with facts and logic. We are all here to take notes and take orders.

[Peter G]

Robert I am surprised by the vehemence of your comment. Our host in this particular case may have lacked the technical understanding for the statement he quoted to make sense and on that basis alone will I disagree with him. I have ventured, as you have, to disagree with him many times. But if you don't believe we have anything to learn from PM why post here? Personally I find I learn a lot from our host and those who comment. And who doesn't enjoy a well crafted rant? That's the frosting on the cake.

[Peter G]

Re postscript. That I would agree with. To give an estimate would be to admit that there exists a way around the detachment of personal data from metadata. But only in a statistical way and to what purpose? They don't need or really want to know that information for this data base to be useful. All you need it for is to have a lock box where relational data can be stored until a legally valid reason exists to examine an individual thread of relationships. I think this is a great compromise between privacy and civil liberties. Could it be open to abuse? Sure. But so could every bit of information about anyone. Your tax returns. Your Medicare claims. Anything. To my mind the only thing that matters, as with any data base of citizen's information, is what protocols and security measures exist to protect the integrity of that data.

[Robert Lipscomb]

@PeterG: I am enjoying the hell out of it, and I am learning a lot.

PM has been liberal in insulting the integrity of all who disagree with him or even hesitate to agree with him. PM is the one who used the word hypocrites or hypocrisy and accused us of reflexively supporting Obama.

Apparently, in PM's world on this issue, the only way to demonstrate one's independent thinking is to reflexively accept his point of view and that of the rest of media as received wisdom.

PM's pretense of discussion is laughable. He has not written a single post that addresses the seriousness of outing spies in Al Qaeda and North Korea and thereby the appropriate response by DOJ to the leaks that led to those events.

While others have addressed "What is 'metadata' and somewhat addressed 'how was it used'?", PM has had no response. By extension, he has offered nothing in the way whether it is proper for our government to engage in surveillance of terrorist organizations, and if so, what should that be.

In lieu of that, he hurls spitballs at the government and anyone who disagrees with him.

So, I am simply calling on PM to to make a argument - once he runs out of spitballs.

[Robert Lipscomb]

I'm not sure my last post went through. Apologies, I am being redundant

RE PS:

In brief, here is my concern. in 2003, lots of people were banging drums for war. When I asked for facts and rationales to justify it, I only received more and louder banging. That made me suspicious.

The same thing seems to be occurring in this situation. o yes, I am contemptuous of what I perceive to be drum banging in response to a legitimate request for facts and rationales.

I will also confess to vehemence. :-)

[Robert Lipscomb]

BTW I will be out of pocket the rest of the day but, as always, look forward to continuing this later.

[Peter G]

Well it certainly is a fascinating subject to debate. For example I will take issue with the generalized trap of suggesting that this somehow violates privacy? Preserving or analysing which numbers call which numbers? I hate to rain on anyone's parade but the phone companies in question do that all the time. As private corporations they do that simply to analyse and build their own networks. Are they violating your privacy by keeping billing information? Nope. Are they obligated to destroy that information once you've paid your bill? Nope. They just don't preserved that information long enough to be useful to law enforcement when you need to track personal communications back in time for a long time. When did Tsarnaev start calling whoever radclized him and who did he talk to? Forensically that would be massively useful to know wouldn't. Furthermore analyzing call data to certain areas of the world outside the US is perfectly valid. Finally modern systems route calls and data through the US even when both the caller and he receiver are outside the US. That's the way the Internet works. How that data may be treated from a security point of view is certainly one worthy of debate.

[Charlieford]

If anyone's interested in seeing this in context, Ron Susskind discusses the origins of this program--in 2001--in his "The One-Percent Doctrine."