Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

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Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?th & emc=th

 

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

 

 

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

Published: December 24, 2005

 

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and

analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications

flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping

program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks

to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and

former government officials.

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The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and

voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than

the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected

by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication

system's main arteries, they said.

 

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic

surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation

of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to

streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

 

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic

have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial

officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some

separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance

program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside

the United States that happen to pass through American-based

telephonic " switches, " according to officials familiar with the matter.

 

" There was a lot of discussion about the switches " in conversations

with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the

gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows.

" You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications,

and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch

that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very,

very concerned about that. "

 

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance

program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his

executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to

the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications

involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

 

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians,

besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed

through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of

patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials

describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

 

The current and former government officials who discussed the program

were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

 

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the

technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad

searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is

highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it

remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full

Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the

program's operational details, as well as its legality.

 

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who

have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to

analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who

is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it

is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail

messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to

have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11

attacks, the officials said.

 

This so-called " pattern analysis " on calls within the United States

would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the

government wanted to trace who calls whom.

 

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration

in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in

connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by

the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of

Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers.

Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over

possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?th & emc=th