The ACLU is in a snit about the recent revelations about the NSA tracking phone calls. Without touching on the privacy issue, just what is the likelyhood of getting any useful info from this? Suppose the NSA were to decide that a certain phone number in Pakistan was of interest-thousands of calls per day were made from this number to phones in the USA. What could be done with this info? Would Al-Queda be so foolish as to use the same numbers all the time? I would think that using email would be far easier for terrorists-sending replies from public libraries, internet cafes, etc., would be a much better way to communicate. Anyway, is this sort of survelleince worth it? (in terms of results obtained)? :rolleyes:
Using your Pakistani phone example. Say that they monitor the phone for 6 months and over that period the phone makes 2000 calls to 200 different numbers, all the numbers are called roughly equally. Now, in the 8th month, they pick up a significant increase inthe frequency and duration of calls to just 20 numbers. They might theorise that something is up. It’s possible that for the first 6 months the calls were your suspected terrorist cells checking in periodically, but in the 8th month an operation was being planned or set-up.
The guys listening in to the calls wouldn’t even have to translate the calls to know something was up.
I believe they call this ‘Traffic analysis’.
Lets say you have either a person who is a known terrorist, or someone that has recieved a call from a known terrorist. Lets say pull that persons number, and get a list of 100 numbers. So you go to each of those 100 people and pull their call history. Now you have a 100 lists of 100 numbers each. Now, lets say that there is a group of 12 people that all call each other. Could be nothing more than an extended family, or it could be a terrorist cell.
What happens after that is something thats not known. I’d put money that some of those phone calls are tapped (even if they are entirely domestic) to see what they are talking about. Or it could be something legal like rifling through their garbage, or following them around.
NSA want to know what are the best sex chatlines too, you know 
People who phone or are phoned by known terrorist supporters may be of interest to national security. Who phoned Moussaoui’s number during 1999 would be interesting for instance.
Do you think putting his phone number on Tart Cards in Soho was a bad idea?
Exactly. By analyzing traffic without knowing the content of the messages, one can also establish organizational structures.
I took the aptitude test for the NSA about 20 years ago, and one of the questions went something like this:
You’re an anthropologist observing a number of tribes living on several islands in the south Pacific. Over six months you have noted the various different kinds of messages that have passed between them, including drum messages, runner messages, and boat messages. You don’t know their language, and don’t know what any of the messages say, but you have a list of messages and where they came from and went to.
The list is presented, and then the test taker is asked a number of questions like:
Who is the chief of all the tribes?
If the chief dies, who is likely to become the new chief?
My first reaction was, Whaaaaaa? But then I realized that they wouldn’t be asking the question if there wasn’t a way to answer it. So I looked at the structure of the messages and found that many messages came in from different places to one point and that there was another point that comunicated only with that point. That was the chief, and the one beneath was the lieutenant.
This is, obviously, a very simple example. NSA has highly sophisticated techniques for conducting traffic analysis that can yield a lot of information just from knowing who is talking to whom. And by collecting the whole country’s phone records, the gummint is now able to conduct traffic analysis on a massive scale. Let’s hope that they don’t mistake your scout troop for a terrorist organization.
Among my problems with this whole thing is that, when you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, you don’t want a larger haystack. Also, I worry that since most ordinary citizens aren’t aware of the depth of knowledge that can be gained from traffic analysis, they may feel that there is little or no harm in letting the the government have all this information, without warrants, without our knowledge or consent, and without any clear evidence that it actually has the potential to really work. To say nothing of the huge potential for abuse that such a huge database represents.
But since this is GQ, I’ll stop before I get too political.
Oh, and I meant to add, for more information about this subject, read The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford.
The Russians did it to the states too, but with a different twist, they monitored all fast food outlets that delivered, so they would know that something was up, when high amounts of pizza were delivered in the Washington area.
Declan
I heard they just hired some local russians to walk up to a hill overlooking langley every night at 6 and see how many cars were parked in the parking lot. Lots of cars = people staying up late = something major going on.
Why Russians? They have superior hill climbing skills versus native white or black non-ethnic Langley, VA talent?
Is there a Russian temp agency in Langley with a consultancy in spying on security agencies?
Embassy staff?
If the KGB was doing surveillance of the CIA surely they wouldn’t use just anyone.
I assumed this was a Data mining operation. They collect a huge amount of data then analyse patterns, based on the phone logs known terrorists. How effective it is another matter, Data mining is one of those buzzwords that is popular at the moment (it was allegely the technology Able Danger used). I don’t know enough about it to say. Though I’m sure alot of IT companies are getting very rich by calling their DB product “data mining” software.
What they do with it after that is another matter ? Presumably you can’t go to a FICA court and say the computer says 555-1234 might be a terrorist can we get a warrant ?