An Argument Not about Civil Rights but Competence
When NSA, DITU (more, below), and other technical collectors of electronic data engage in gathering up every e-mail and telephone communication they come across, then they are engaged in data vacuuming, not intelligence. Why? By definition, intelligence is analytical, selective, and differentiated from mere accumulation of data. What distinguishes intelligence is the infusion of analysis with a focus on satisfying collection requirements that serve the national interest. In other words, intelligence is akin to asking a relevant question, taking down the answer, and corroborating and weighing that answer before weaving it into a report on (usually) foreign activities in order to inform the decisions of our own national leaders. (For a distinction between intelligence and information, consult a brief, accessible monograph by the U.S. Coast Guard, Coast Guard Publication 2-0, Intelligence, May 2010, available at http://www.uscg.mil/doctrine/CGPub/CG_Pub_2_0.pdf )
When the National Security Administration, a domestic signals interception arm of the FBI called the Data Intercept Technology Unit, or any other government service sets itself to collecting every available signal first, in hope of sifting through it later for potential intelligence value, this process turns into routine fishing in a boundless sea. (See this November 21 article in Foreign Policy for fresh details: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/21/the_obscure_fbi_team_that_does_the_nsa_dirty_work ) The process takes on the appearance of a horde of minions too unsophisticated to ask questions and work with the answers who instead resort to copying and scanning every book in sight on the theory that someone, somewhere will find some important answers in all this -- eventually. After all, if there is enough horse manure, there must be a pony here, somewhere.
What perpetuates this rote collection is that data vacuuming like this is not entirely without value. It may indeed supply some intelligence yield once sifted, analyzed, and, where possible, woven into an overall fabric that forms the larger tapestry of a meaningful intelligence estimate. Absent this weaving process, a step easily bypassed in the zeal to vacuum all data in sight, this data collection threatens to turn into a perpetual pulling of loose threads to stuff into a room which takes on the character of a hoarder's clutter rather than an executive's reference library. This recalls the kind of problem that may have led management authority Peter Drucker, in his final years, to observe that in modern information technology (or IT), there is a tendency to find more T than I (Management Challenges for the 21st Century, NY: HarperCollins, 1999, pp. 97-99).
The problem is that just because technology enables doing something on a massive scale this does not mean that the doing will necessarily result in a worthwhile yield. Indeed, one must ask whether the modest or unassessed yield is in proportion to its cost, whether that cost be measured in dollars, staffing, civil rights, public confidence, or all of these. When it comes to thwarting terrorist attacks like that of the Boston Marathon bombings, a dispassionate observer could argue that all the signs were there and yet all the capacity to intercept communications of or about the bombers failed to deliver a protective or preemptive yield. To say that these attackers got lucky, fell through the cracks, or otherwise eluded preemption because no system is perfect is to nevertheless highlight how massive post-9/11 data vacuuming appears to leave us with the same vulnerability that existed before we had this capacity. Maybe we have lost our focus. Perhaps we are diverting too many resources to solving the wrong problem. Making intelligence serve preemption may be a higher value than data vacuuming for its own sake.
Just because someone gives you a crutch, you don't have to break your leg. In a sense, data vacuuming on a massive scale is to NSA what behavioral detection has become to TSA (about which more earlier this month in this blog under Blame Detector, Not Behavioral Detection): a potentially useful tool being misapplied. What remains to be seen is whether this tool is an instrument of intelligence or an unfocused, unaccountable exercise in wielding technology just because it is there. Intelligence is more than raw data; it presupposes interjection of mind into the swirl of events, and not just the promise of eventual synthesis and analysis. Mere data vacuuming on a massive scale hardly measures up well in passing for intelligence.
-- Nick Catrantzos
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Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.