The Pre-Dragnet Cold War Contact Chaining
I’m still working through some things from Judge Richard Leon’s injunction against the phone dragnet.
But for the moment I wanted to point to something the government claimed in the FBI’s declaration in the case, by Acting Assistant Director Robert Holley. He says,
For decades reaching back to the Cold-War era, the FBI has relied on contact chaining as a method of detecting foreign espionage networks and operatives, both in the United States and abroad, and disrupting their plans.
The language here seems somewhat forced. “Decades reaching back to the Cold War-era” might only mean 1988.
Moreover, the fact that FBI claims they’ve been doing this for “decades” suggests they’ve been doing it for decades before they put together the phone dragnet, even decades before they required telecoms to keep phone records for 18 months.
Doesn’t that mean it’s possible to do successfully without the dragnet and without 5 years of data?
If the technique, absent the dragnet, was effective against the Soviet Union, why do we need a dragnet against a less powerful adversary now?
Question…quote:”If the technique, absent the dragnet, was effective against the Soviet Union, why do we need a dragnet against a less powerful adversary now?”unquote
Answer..
ummmm..well…er….uh..would you repeat that please?
Because they’re afraid that we might get out the pitchforks and torches.
Pen registers, trap & trace, mail covers and paid informants have been around for a long time. Didn’t the judge say what we’re into now is a whole different ballgame that is not comparable? Your point and Leon’s I suppose is that Smith was not about collecting everything on everybody all the time.
This is the FBI we’re talking about. Don’t believe it said that they were effective.
Forget technology for a moment.
The FBI did “contact chaining” when it, for example, surveilled a meeting and see who showed up. Then, they surveilled everyone who showed up and see who they contacted.
The FBI, indeed every law enforcement/intelligence agency, has done contact chaining since law enforcement agencies were invented.
Traffic analysis has been one of the principal methods of military signals intelligence ever since radiocommunication started. It saw prominent use already in World War One.
The related fields of social network analysis and network science also have a long history.
If the technique, absent the dragnet, was effective against the Soviet Union, why do we need a dragnet against a less powerful adversary now? – See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/#sthash.QZ37db5n.dpuf
Not saying I agree 100% with the national surveillance establishment, but Cold War espionage agents weren’t planning or committing terror attacks, so there wasn’t the same time pressure.
@Saul Tannenbaum: Agree. But they’re sort of stuck, no? Claiming this is old as day, but also claiming that they need the entire haystack.
Ultimately, I think, that will be their undoing.
@OSS: They weren’t? Then why were we engaging in terrorism against so many govts, including in C America?
@emptywheel: I don’t really read it that way. What I think they’re trying to do is establish that this is not really anything new, it’s just another step in the technological advancement of a proven investigative technique. The declaration does go on to explain just how wonderfully agile the NSA has made searching the metadata.
The downfall, I think, comes from the point where all this efficiency becomes seen as creepily invasive.
@Saul Tannenbaum: quote”The downfall, I think, comes from the point where all this efficiency becomes seen as creepily invasive.”unquote
Yeah, sorta like brain sucking alien parasites.
@emptywheel: As more reports come in from the “field trip” a number of folks, including Dan Drezner (here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/16/tone_deaf_at_the_listening_post_my_day_at_the_NSA#sthash.lRJLL86e.dpbs ), took to the NSA, it becomes increasingly clear that, at some core level, they think the dragnet is not only perfectly legal, it’s not even a close call.
The downfall of the dragnet will come from how “tone deaf” the NSA is to how this sounds to outsiders. They’ve built this mindset where collecting data is really collecting data because they only look at it under (allegedly) well defined legal circumstances. I can appreciate how that mindset developed through a collective groupthink, fueled by some hot shot technologists who can build software to implement that collect-but-don’t-look. But this isn’t quantum physics where the cat is both dead and alive until somebody looks. This is a government agency that’s twisted the plain English meaning of words, convinced itself and its oversight co-dependents that the words mean what the NSA says and therefore it’s all ok, and is finally being confronted by people outside its world who beg to differ.
@Saul Tannenbaum:
IIRC, the law enforcement theory used to include contact chaining after reasonable suspicion to build probable cause. Plus there never was an expectation of privacy at public meeting – we used to have some right to privacy with phone calls and mail.
Now it appears (all?!?) the law-enforcement agencies dip and scan at will through an inherently linked multi-source metadata map of most of the electronic contacts made in or through the US. Leaves zero room for expectation of financial transaction, phone call or mail going untracked by gov’t which guts a major intention of the 4th Amendment – the prohibition of general warrants.
The ‘business records’ fig leaf doesn’t cover the ‘all’ part. Because the suspicion is not upon the companies in the FISC warrants, they are in truth general warrants against the undifferentiated millions of customers. Same and more can be said against the NSLs also used for haystacking. Probably there is an underlayer of MOUs – nudge nudge wink wink say no more – and quiet flows of money and BigData continue between the USG and long time corporate partners.