Director
of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national
intelligence, in September. He has strongly defended intelligence
gathering practices. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press )Given access to a large trove of the NSA documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the
New York Times has
published an aerial view
of the agency—cataloging numerous and varied surveillance
programs—which the paper says shows that President Obama and other
high-ranking officials who defend the agency by citing its
counterterrorism credentials are using "a misleadingly narrow sales
pitch for an agency with an almost unlimited agenda."
Though
critical and informative on many levels, however, the approach and
perhaps unintended consequences of the story raises some questions.
According to the
Times, "the scale and aggressiveness" of the NSA's global spying apparatus detailed in the Snowden documents "are breathtaking."
And in three key paragraphs, the
Times rattled off a series of acronym-laden programs and clandestine cyber-operations conducted by the NSA:
The agency’s Dishfire database — nothing happens without a code word
at the N.S.A. — stores years of text messages from around the world,
just in case. Its Tracfin collection accumulates gigabytes of credit
card purchases. The fellow pretending to send a text message at an
Internet cafe in Jordan may be using an N.S.A. technique code-named
Polarbreeze to tap into nearby computers. The Russian businessman who is
socially active on the web might just become food for Snacks, the
acronym-mad agency’s Social Network Analysis Collaboration Knowledge
Services, which figures out the personnel hierarchies of organizations
from texts.
The spy agency’s station in Texas intercepted 478 emails while
helping to foil a jihadist plot to kill a Swedish artist who had drawn
pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. N.S.A. analysts delivered to
authorities at Kennedy International Airport the names and flight
numbers of workers dispatched by a Chinese human smuggling ring.
The agency’s eavesdropping gear, aboard a Defense Department plane
flying 60,000 feet over Colombia, fed the location and plans of FARC
rebels to the Colombian Army. In the Orlandocard operation, N.S.A.
technicians set up what they called a “honeypot” computer on the web
that attracted visits from 77,413 foreign computers and planted spyware
on more than 1,000 that the agency deemed of potential future interest.
However, despite the scale and scope of the
Times' reporting
on the documents, it was difficult for some to avoid the feeling that
part of the exhaustive review was designed to scuttle future—perhaps
more detailed—reporting on the same programs.
Unlike most other reporting so far done on the leaked NSA documents,
which seem to have followed a more deliberate kind of approach by
looking at one surveillance program or revelation at a time, the
decision to publish a single feature-length piece on numerous programs
raised the ire of some.
As the transparency advocacy group Wikileaks responded:
WikiLeaks ✔
@wikileaks
The reference is to former Bobby Inman, who directed the NSA himself in the late 70s and early 80s. For those who think the
Times'
rapid-fire review of the Snowden documents might, in fact, serve the
interests of the agency over the public, Inman's unsolicited advice to
his former employer serves as an interesting clue.
“My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself,” Inman told the
Times.
“It would certainly be a shock to the agency. But bad news doesn’t get
better with age. The sooner they get it out and put it behind them, the
faster they can begin to rebuild.”
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