Wired: The NSA Is Building The Country's Biggest Spy Center

[Billy Mitchell]

Politics aside, this building confirms that privacy is dead.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

The agency has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program’s exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn’t revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.

For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail.

He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation’s cable landing stations—the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US.

 

[Billy Mitchell]

For what it's worth, the NSA denies the story.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/nsa-denies-wired/

Congressman Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, asked Alexander whether the NSA could, at the direction of Dick Cheney, identify people who sent e-mails making fun of his inability to hunt in order to waterboard them.

Alexander said “No,” adding that the “NSA does not have the ability to do that in the United States.” Elaborating, Alexander added: “We don’t have the technical insights in the United States. In other words, you have to have [...] some way of doing that either by going to a service provider with a warrant or you have to be collecting in that area. We’re not authorized to do that, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to collect that kind of information.”

 

[DEACisGO]

The NSA has been able to listen in on all communication for many years.

 

[RJKarl]

Who says "State of the Union" and "Person of Interest" are fiction?

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

I just read Secret Sentry, an impressive history of the NSA. The NSA is both extremely scary in mission and authority, and surprisingly ineffective in execution. Yet another bloated, overly-expensive intelligence department that is painfully less competent than generally believed.

 

[DEACisGO]

Can someone explain to me the difference between the FBI, CIA, and NSA?

 

[leftcoastdeac]

Can someone explain to me the difference between the FBI, CIA, and NSA?

Arlington should be able to answer this easily.

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

Briefly, the FBI is a criminal investigation agency tasked with investigating federal crimes that take place within the United States. The CIA is a covert intelligence-gathering agency tasked with conducting operations abroad, and has no legal authority to operate within the United States or to investigate US citizens (though, regrettably, it does both). The NSA, the largest of the three, is a code-breaking surveillance agency with a mandate to provide SIGINT (signals intercept intelligence) to its executive branch customers (CIA, NRO, and the DoD/Pentagon). The NSA is nominally under the authority of the CIA, and has the same legal restrictions, but in practice is separately appropriated funds and lobbies for its own sake within the intelligence community. Its existence is technically a state secret, though a poorly kept one.

 

[DEACisGO]

Thanks Arlington, just in that brief post I learned a lot.

 

[Billy Mitchell]

Hypothetically, if a politician or organization wanted to try and stop programs like this, is there anyone who actually could?

 

[RJKarl]

Implementing this program would be a great way to end unemployment. It would take tons of people to monitor and transcribe all the data.

Think of all the new gossip sites from leaked information.

This could be a bonanza.

 

[RacerDeac]

Implementing this program would be a great way to end unemployment. It would take tons of people to monitor and transcribe all the data.

You realize we have computers now that monitor the data, right? And printers that print the data so it doesn't need to be written out by hand? They go right along with police radar that can read the speed of oncoming traffic!!

 

[RJKarl]

What part of ending a post with a smiley face don't you understand?

It seems like you are the old man here in not understanding emoticons.

 

[RacerDeac]

What part of ending a post with a smiley face don't you

Sorry, you don't get the benefit of the doubt when you refer to "putting the forum in the cloud" and "police radar that can tell the speed of oncoming traffic" as if they are new fangled technology.

It seems like you are the old man here in not understanding emoticons.

Sorry, I assumed you thought you were bring clever with your ground breaking idea, because I didn't really find it funny. Try using a wink smiley next time.

 

[BarcaDeac]

Briefly, the FBI is a criminal investigation agency tasked with investigating federal crimes that take place within the United States. The CIA is a covert intelligence-gathering agency tasked with conducting operations abroad, and has no legal authority to operate within the United States or to investigate US citizens (though, regrettably, it does both). The NSA, the largest of the three, is a code-breaking surveillance agency with a mandate to provide SIGINT (signals intercept intelligence) to its executive branch customers (CIA, NRO, and the DoD/Pentagon). The NSA is nominally under the authority of the CIA, and has the same legal restrictions, but in practice is separately appropriated funds and lobbies for its own sake within the intelligence community. Its existence is technically a state secret, though a poorly kept one.

yeah like the signs for the building on the Baltimore-Washington Pkwy

 

[RJKarl]

"Sorry, I assumed you thought you were bring clever with your ground breaking idea, because I didn't really find it funny. Try using a wink smiley next time.[/QUOTE]

Then you'd find another excuse.

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

Hypothetically, if a politician or organization wanted to try and stop programs like this, is there anyone who actually could?

The NSA is a part of the Executive Branch, and is controlled mainly by the National Security Council and the DoD/Pentagon. The NSC exercises the most direct control over our covert agencies. Technically the President, through the NSC and DoD/Pentagon, can exercise direct control over agency policy, but there are many classified, legacy command-and-control presidential directives still in place from the Cold War that effectively allow the intelligence community to make many its own decisions in policy areas (a process that is technically illegal). Congress is supposed to be able to control the use of the CIA, NSA, and DoD/Pentagon through its funding power, but the regular adoption of "black" budgets by the Pentagon -- the process of lying to Congress and the American public about what money is being used for what, and how much -- has effectively destroyed this Constitutional power, since Congress and the public regularly receive deliberately inaccurate budgetary information from the DoD/Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Congress has allowed this to happen to itself, afraid to speak up against the process and get blasted for threatening national security, the DoD/Pentagon's catch-all attack when military budgets are questioned, or even receive scrutiny.

This "black budget" process is in direct violation of the Constitution, but that is simply ignored by everyone. The fiscal subterfuge was rampant in the 50s and 60s, curtailed sharply in the 70s after Watergate, and then exploded to previously unheard of proportions during the Reagan administration. In fact, the Reagan White House effective created a shadow intelligence organization, funded by illegal arms sales to several terrorist regimes, including Iran, to exist outside any and all public or governmental oversight and serve as the President's direct channel for illegal covert activity, in order to enact operations in direct defiance of Congress and the law.

(I still find it amazing that most of the Reagan's nation security personnel, including the President, did not serve at least some time in prison for creating The Enterprise and Yellow Fruit (the active components of Reagan's shadow covert agency). Ollie North, the key architect of this illegal operations structure, was basically a pathological criminal and liar, and established a completely off-the-records intelligence organization acting as a private firm for the use of the President, to enact missions barred by law or direct Congressional decree, paid for by stolen federal funds or the direct sales of weapons to terrorist regimes, and yet almost zero happened about it. And the worst part of this illegal covert venture was that literally everything they undertook failed, miserably. Everything. It was a covert disaster-house that stole money from the federal budget, supplied arms to terrorists, authorized attempted regimes change operations (read: armed insurgents) against democratically-elected governments (nearly all of which failed), and paid millions in bribes to Islamic terrorists holding hostages (also failed), for zero return.

The Eighties were pretty mind-boggling. How did the Reagan administration get away with this stuff? It was borderline treasonous, extremely high-level illegal activity. I have to shake my head when people use Reagan as a positive symbol for American foreign policy. Good speeches, but just laughably bad execution of anything more complicated than verbally condemning the Soviets--literally everything Reagan attempted outside of Western Europe was a disaster. And don't forget the raft of incredibly high level crimes. And today for some reason he's a GOP icon of American strength and competency. Do not get.)