Richard Falkenrath, currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution, writing in today's Washington Post, has a rather interesting defense of the NSA program collecting "anonymized" telephone information. Anonymized meaning of course that all personal identifiers and all actual content is removed.
The potential value of such anonymized domestic telephone records is best understood through a hypothetical example. Suppose a telephone associated with Mohamed Atta had called a domestic telephone number A. And then suppose that A had called domestic telephone number B. And then suppose that B had called C. And then suppose that domestic telephone number C had called a telephone number associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The most effective way to recognize such patterns is the computerized analysis of billions of phone records. The large-scale analysis of anonymized data can pinpoint individuals — at home or abroad — who warrant more intrusive investigative or intelligence techniques, subject to all safeguards normally associated with those techniques.
Clearly, there is a compelling national interest in understanding and penetrating such terrorist networks. If the people associated with domestic telephone numbers A, B and C are inside the United States and had facilitated the Sept. 11 attacks, perhaps they are facilitating a terrorist plot now. The American people rightly expect their government to detect and prevent such plots. (Emphasis added).
Which sums the whole thing up pretty neatly. (Prediction: many spittle splashed monitors in lefty circles on reading Falkenrath's piece). There's even something in here I have not seen in any of the legal analyses I have seen on this program – and it could be the thing that disarms every complaint.
There are, of course, strict legal limits on the ability of federal agencies such as the NSA to compel the provision of domestic information or to collect it secretly. The USA Today story, however, alleges that three telecommunications companies — AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth — provided it voluntarily. How else could one company (Qwest) decline to provide the information? Since there is no prohibition against federal agencies receiving voluntarily provided business records relating to their responsibilities, it appears that the NSA's alleged receipt and retention of such information is perfectly legal.
That's an interesting position, indeed. Since I don't even play a lawyer on television, I won't speculate on it. Combined with the last post, this is beginning to look like a world class set-up. I think it will be interesting next week. Very interesting.
Note: Falkenrath served as deputy homeland security adviser and deputy assistant to the president.
UPDATE: I'm not the only one sensing something. Dread Pundit Bluto, posting at Jawa Report, is also feeling a disruption in the Force.
Oops.
We’ll see, like I said – I’m not a lawyer.
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Sorry to change the subject, but the VERY interesting title caught my eye.
Yesterday you found the WaPo poll VERY interesting, and when on to make lots of deductions from the numbers.
I was just wondering if you found the Newsweek poll, out today, VERY interesting – and what deductions you might draw from them numbers.
They haven’t published the raw data yet, so I don’t know what to make of it yet.
Am I missing something? Falkenrath talks about the phone numbers being “anonymized”, but then goes on to say that it would be good to know if Mohamed Atta was talking to people who were talking to people who were talking to people who were talking to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But if the numbers are anonymized, how do they know that?
At some point some numbers have to be de-anonymized.
The more I think about this, the more I’m skeptical of the numbers being anonymized. If all the numbers are anonymous, then it seems the data likely is useless. For the data to become useful, there has to be a relatively easy way to connect the numbers to people.
I would imagine that, in Falkenrath’s scenario, the authorities would quickly become interested in who owned telephone numbers A, B, and C.
The biggest problem is that this program, and the previously disclosed NSA program, are being done without oversight. So, there’s no assurance that the data isn’t being used for political purposes.
If you think that only Bush opponents are potential targets, think again–remember, in the Nixon White House, speech writer William Safire was wiretapped while working for Nixon.
Right-wing bloggers could be targets if they are seen as not loyal enough. Or, they could be targets just to make sure that they continue to be loyal.
I think you have a misconception here. The sheer volume of calls makes the anonymous nature possible. We’re talking billions upon billions of calls. Only if a pattern did emerge would it be even remotely necessary to try to dig out numbers to investigate.
It also sounds like there has been oversight with Congress aware of the program. (See Hoekstra post).
If the numbers can be dug up for further investigation, they’re not anonymous. It might be accurate to say they’re obscured, but they’re not anonymous.