They're Only Listening To You To Figure Out If It's Worth Listening To You
Published by BG on Saturday, September 08, 2007 at 6:16 PM.F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets - New York Times
The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.
The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target in turn was in contact with. The bureau recently stopped the practice in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said Friday after being asked about it.
The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists.
The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it is also thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program.
Here's a little clarity on why the government doesn't want to go through the FISA courts for warrants. Simply put, it's because they don't want to confine eavesdropping to those people who they can identify as a potential threat. They want to monitor their mom, their lawyer, their minister and their bookie as well. Because there's no presumption of possible lawbreaking in this "Friends & Family" theory of wiretapping, there's little chance FISA would grant these warrants in the first place.
It's that last part of the clip above that sounds especially Kafkaesque to me. They're using this wiretapping to figure out who they should be wiretapping.
Fantastic.
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