Dec 24 2005

NY Times Treasonous Tips To Terrorists

Published by at 12:19 am under All General Discussions,FISA-NSA

Updates at end

You would think the NY Times would think twice about leaking details about how we are trying to trace and track Al Qaeda, and Bin Laden especially. But no – today they run more details on our most secret counter terrorism operation, providing our enemies more understanding and more information on how to avoid our monitors for the next 9-11.

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

“All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there’s been much more active involvement in that area,” said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.

Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

“If they get content, that’s useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis,” he said. “Massive amounts of traffic analysis information – who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden’s circle of family and friends – is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny.”

Geez, why not just tell Bin Laden when we are coming to get him too! This is just criminal:

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.’s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program’s operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

Who are these criminals tipping off our enemies?

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The government’s collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.’s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic “switches,” according to officials familiar with the matter.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970’s-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

This sounds a lot like Judge Robertson and Silliman (here and here). Hopefully they understand they never received any immunity from prosecution.

Unless the NY Times is ready to gaurantee each and every American there is no more threat of attack, they need to be shut down. And people need to go to jail.

This must end. Partisans who take the law and our national security into their own hands, outside our government processes, are nothing better than traitors.

On another leak on a program meant to find nuclear devices on US soil, some idiot liberals are claiming nuclear bomb radiation is considered privacy.

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree.

What privacy is gained or loss by not allowing radiation measurements? There is no insight into the activities of anyone except people illegally in possession of nuclear material! In this case the label ‘legal scholar’ is clearly an oxymoron

So the left now says we cannot tap communications between terrorists overseas and their contacts here, nor cab we test for radiation from a nuclear bomb on private property???

The left has gone looney if they think this conspiracy theory madness is going to convince anyone who is not seriously paranoid. Why not go back to raising feara about the mind control devices at the NSA as well?

UPDATE:

Watching MSNBC this morning, the reporter on the nuclear detection leak was on and proved the point this was non story, and of course he leaked details he shouldn’t have. He pointed out:

(1) The program has been in effect for 30 years
(2) The program had been focused on major sporting events like the Super Bowl (thanks for letting that out of the bag)
(3) The program was ratcheted up after 9-11 (duh!)
(4) There is no entry or seizure, and the only thing being measured is radiation levels in the bandwidths for nuclear devices (dirty and weapons grade).
(5) He let slip the ‘containers’ the sensor devices can be carried or hidden in, plus how many cars used a day and surveys done, as well as the method of approach.

The fool compared this to a case where infrared sensors were used to identify whether a heat lamp was present in the home for Cannibas growing. The difference in the two sensors is night and day – and it has to do with what information you can glean from the data.

Infrared can determine number of people, it can determine location and movement, it can determine activities (use your imagination), etc. You can look through walls with infrared to some degree (watch some spy thriller movies like Patriot Games and TV’s 24).

Nuclear radiation measurements can only tell you one thing – whether there is nuclear radiation present, and where it might be in the structure. But it is measuring the radioactive decay of a handful of elements that are no common and do not expose behavior or private details of the inhabitants.

The only information is whether a radioactive element like uranium is present at some minimal quantity (which is large enough to do some harm). That is it. Reporters are so ignorant of basic science they cannot understand when their rationalizations are not showing sophistication but ignorance.

The story should not have run because (a) there is no loss of privacy, (b) the analogous cases given to them by their sources (trust me, the press did not think these up) or irrelevent, and (c) they story was a plant for partisan purposes.

SBD mentioned in the comments something I think would be a very good idea. We need to hit these media organizations where it counts. I think a grass roots civil case is just the ticket. In fact a series of them. The government may not be able to sue the media, but we the people can! It is time to shutdown the NY Times and USA Today – or at least give them good reason to start behaving like professionals again.

Tom Maguire comments here on the NY Times war on America.

More at Memeorandum and Michelle Malkin’s. I like the way Pierre frames what we are seeing:

MSM with the aid of a traitor inside our government revealed the tactics being used by the operations.
To ensure accurate readings, in up to 15 percent of the cases the monitoring needed to take place on private property, sources say, such as on mosque parking lots and private driveways.

UPDATE II:

More by Rick Moran, who is rightfully outraged.

13 responses so far

13 Responses to “NY Times Treasonous Tips To Terrorists”

  1. NYT’s At It Again

    I just don’t understand these people. Do they not understand that publishing this kind of information makes it more difficult to find and kill the very terrorists who want our Nation destroyed?

  2. smh10 says:

    AJ: How far is the media willing to go to try and destroy this administration? I never thought I would see the day that the liberals and their MSM cohorts would compromise National Security for their political gains. It seems that public opinion no longer holds any weight in decisions made by editors and politicians.
    Some serious investigations need to be commenced and heads need to roll here.
    This is the lives of every American they are now jeopardizing. Let’s hope the administration and DOJ fight back hard.
    Have a nice Christmas.

  3. nar9350 says:

    Oh give me a break. Let them eat cake!

    See my comment over at The Volokh Conspiracy:

    A Case for Transparent Privacy

    I would encourage readers to check out my piece re the LE paradigm. Granted, it might be a little rough around the edges for these hollowed halls. It does come from my perspective as a local LE professional who has written over 500 search warrants in his career some of which have included high tech related issues.

    It boils down to this, you can’t win a war by playing defense. There is no way you can protect all potential targets from attack from all possible scenarios. This results in the under utilization and misallocation of scarce resources. Think “pork barrel” and “gold plated fire trucks” that everyone is trying to get with DHS money.

    You must play offense, deploy your resources intelligently, and in all cases engage the enemy.

    This is where the traditional LE paradigm breaksdown. This is not a police action where the rules can include the finer points of probable cause. The apprehension and prosecution of the prepetraitors becomes nonrelevant. The mission should be to prevent an attack. The players become insignificant. After all because of the enemy’s radical extremist religious cult-like ideology/belief structure, it’s agents launch suicidal attacks.

    […]

    [WMD, dirty bomb, or chem bio attack]

    Anyone of these could literally destablized our government and society. Now you tell me whether a little transparent privacy is in order here until we can wipe this ideology of hate and evil from the face of this earth?

    OK I’m done now.

    Read More

    Link

  4. Media Lies says:

    The Times goes for broke

    Apparently not satisfied with exposing critical national secrets, the Times has posted a follow…

  5. Larwyn says:

    NAR9350 wrote:
    “Think “pork barrel” and “gold plated fire trucks” that everyone is trying to get with DHS money.”

    This is exactly the point I was making when the Dems filibustered the
    extention of the Patriot Act.

    I said if they did not want to allow the tools in the Patriot Act and now
    add the NSA’s monitoring – ALL HOMELAND SECURITY $$$$$$$
    taken back from these Senators’ states.

    The Dems only want defensive efforts that will swell the public sector unions and therefore increase their campaigne coffers and voters.

    GW cannot worry about being a “uniter” with these vermin – they
    must be treated as the Benedict Arnolds that they are.

  6. sbd says:

    I know this might sound crazy, but only way to get rid of the scum that is the NYT, is by hitting them in their pocket book. There’s got to be a way to file a class action lawsuit against them. Their reporting contnues to put our country in grave danger. Since the Country is “We The People”, I would think any US citizen could join in the Class Action. Could you imagine how many plaintiffs would join the Class!!! I know it sounds far fetched, but it never hurts to ask. Does anyone know a Lawyer that could come up with a legitimate class action suit against the NYT??

    SBD

  7. Snapple says:

    Well, I am glad these sophisticated technologies can protect us, and I think that practically all Americans want these methods used against our terrorist enemies–domestic and foreign. And we should never have these programs discussed in the papers during wartime.

    I was against telling about Able Danger, remember?

    I predicted that if Able Danger was publicized to “show up” Democratic mistakes then the Democrats would retaliate by leaking information derogatory to the Republicans.

    And that now appears to be happening.

    Republicans and Democrats are trying to show each other up by leaking classified programs.

    And the Democrats have really gone way too far, but both parties have made it easier for our terrorist enemies to just read our secrets in the NYT and Washington Post.

    The enemy is inside our country planning attacks. We can’t treat this like a law enforcement issue.

  8. Snapple says:

    AJ–don’t you have any tricycles that you thought you could assemble better than Toys-R-US?

    You must have been up all night to catch this.

    Totally off-topic, but this is a good site for cooking
    http://www.cooks.com/

    Someone may be hovering over your roof tonite, and word on the street is that he has the latest NEST sniff-technology in his black bag.

    I am hoping this will attract a warrantless search!

    I am trying to decide what to do with my tenderloin
    http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-00,tenderloin_steak,FF.html

  9. Snapple says:

    AJ writes, “Why not go back to raising fears about the mind control devices at the NSA as well? ”

    There is some way to read minds at least a little bit.

    Google John Norseen and read this article from 2000.

    http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/norseen.html

    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center have all awarded small basic research contracts to Norseen, who works for Lockheed Martin’s Intelligent Systems Division. Norseen is waiting to hear if the second stage of these contracts – portions of them classified – comes through.

    Norseen’s theories are grounded in current science. Mapping human brain functions is now routine. By viewing a brain scan recorded by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, scientists can tell what the person was doing at the time of the recording – say, reading or writing. Emotions from love to hate can be recognized from the brain’s electrical activity.

    Thought police. So could the murderous thoughts of a terrorist, asserts Norseen, who wrote his thesis at the Naval War College on applying neuroscience research to antiterrorism. He has submitted a research-and-development plan to the Pentagon, at its request, to identify a terrorist’s mental profile. A miniaturized brain-mapping device inside an airport metal detector would screen passengers’ brain patterns against a dictionary of brain prints. Norseen predicts profiling by brain print will be in place by 2005….“If this research pans out”, says Norseen, “you can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it.” But Norseen says he is “agnostic” on the moral ramifications, that he’s not a “mad” scientist – just a dedicated one. “The ethics don’t concern me,” he says, “but they should concern someone else.”

  10. Dr. Sanity says:

    The New Benedict Arnolds?

    AJ Strata was one of the first to speculate that so-called “protest” resignation of Judge Robertson from the FISA court may have really been because he was one of the leakers of the classified NSA program. He and others are now wondering if Jay Rocke…

  11. Searching for Nukes with both hands tied behind ou

    Lets see now, if we take the bit about Muslims out of that USA TODAY headline “EXCLUSIVE: Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants”, how many Americans would think this headline” Nuclear Monitoring done without search warrants”

  12. az redneck says:

    30ears ago?? I’m shocked. Shocked!
    Now that I think about it, the army had us running about the countryside doing the same thing in the 50s in my CBR classes (even then we couldn’t say nuculer). But the equipment was primitive, you understand. Not even as good as I later provided to my h.s. physics students.
    We should immediately put Ford and Carter in prison for about 40 years, along with Nixon. Oh,wait—

  13. Unscripted Thoughts says:

    My Grandfather used to say to me “Circumstances do not define ‘who’ you are…but they do reveal who you are.” I am not overly concerned with the gathering of massive amounts of data to put together a jig-saw puzzle that might (or might not) prevent a disaster. I am concerned about “who is watching the watchers” as so ably demonstrated by the Barrett report detailing IRS abuse under Clinton. (BTW, interesting that little tidbit got buried isn’t it?)

    No doubt that the NYT revelations are damaging to US national security interests and I hope will be aggressively prosecuted. Apparently, the MSM is trying to relive the “glory days” of Vietnam….but this is no Vietnam and the stakes are immense. The bottom line for all of this: the US must now abandon expensive systems (and existing networks) already in place and shift its strategy and techniques. When I was a young Navy Lieutenant, Aldridge Ames compromised our systems and caused the same thing. He was revealed as a traitor. Any bets on how the so-called “journalists” will fare?

    One (possibly) good thing that may come of this entire sorry episode: the bad guys now THINK they know what our capabilities are….and that can still work in our favor.