What’s the point if it doesn’t work?
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.
“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.
And speaking of spending piles of cash to accomplish who knows what, while adding in gross incompetence:
[…] The GAO’s report found that the annual number of TSA misconduct cases over the last three years has increased, from 2,691 in fiscal year 2010 to 3,408 in fiscal year 2012. The offenses include everything from sleeping on the job to failing to follow screening procedures to even theft.
At our airport, the TSA decided that valet parked cars needed to be searched, because the TSA’s goal is to keep expanding until every single low-probability threat at an airport has been addressed. Never mind that there are dozens of other places where people congregate (and valet park) that have nothing like the security at the airport. Airports must be perfectly safe no matter the cost or inconvenience, because 9/11.
The NSA and the TSA are two examples of the security-industrial complex gone wild after 9/11. Bureaucracies and their contractors have had a dozen-year blank check to do whatever it takes to make us secure. When we try to rein them in, they either say that what they’re doing is so secret it can’t be discussed, or they make vague reference to foiled plots. At some point, those agencies are going to have to show that Rapiscans, collecting every phone call to Mom and Dad, and squirreling away every Facebook “like” in a giant database actually makes us safer.
Baud
How does one prove the efficacy of security programs?
The Red Pen
Every time someone challenges me with “Are you comfortable with the NSA knowing everything about you?” I imagine a slightly different version of a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Indiana: What are you doing with all the phone data?
Maj. Eaton: We have top men working on it now.
Indiana: Who?
Maj. Eaton: Top. Men.
[Shot of phone data being put in a crate and forgotten.]
deep
I’ve been saying it for a while now, I’m not nearly as scared of the government tapping my phone lines than one of their outsourced employees with some kinda gripe against former-Republicans-who-visit-liberal-blogs selling my data to Stormfront or something. I’d like to NOT be a statistic of gun violence thankyouverymuch.
weaselone
Given the “massive privacy implications” concerned, I’m certain that Senator Leahy is busy drafting legislation as I type to prevent corporations from doing with absolutely no oversight what the NSA was doing with insufficient and insufficiently transparent oversight.
Lee
Relevant TechCrunch article.
WereBear
That’s the key Wingnuts are especially poor at grasping: that while we may not like what the government is doing, we have levers to pull to change their direction. The motivation in a government job is security and bennies; this might not push them to do a stellar job (though many do, anyway) but it also keeps them from screwing around for their own purposes. There are standards to be met.
Corporations, especially now, have no restraints. Their employees can do anything they want. There are no standards except profit, no goal except profit, and no penalty except loss of profit.
The only lever we have is government regulation. And wingnuts want us to take that away.
Ash Can
@weaselone: I’m happy enough with Leahy doing what he’s doing now. It’s a big enough job trying to clean up the mess that the Patriot Act made. If someone else wants to address the corporate side of the issue in the meantime, even better.
raven
@deep: Sheeesh, that’s a lot of worrying!
boatboy_srq
@deep: Doesn’t that describe Snowden pretty effectively?
Suffern ACE
Yeah. The republicans will outlaw the nudge squad 66 times before you can keep your shoes on or make a sexy phone call without some spy listening in.
Botsplainer
Clearly, the vague fears of trembling, panty-wetting racist militia fucktards and emoprog”men” will be totally worth the lives lost by having a net unsurveilled by anyone except hackers, malware coders, and your clicked-through “valued business partners”.
Botsplainer
@deep:
Why do you hate Freedom? And ‘Murka? You should be honored to let your blood sprinkle those roots so that fat camo-wearing tobacco cheered can amass arsenals in case the blahs rise up.
Botsplainer
Goddamn autocorrect. Cheered=chewers
Botsplainer
Goddamn autocorrect. Cheered=chewers
boatboy_srq
I always thought the TSA, rather like the sequester, was supposed to be inconvenient by design. After all, they’re doing precious little at US seaports, where all the stuff the US buys from China/Brazil/Chile/Bangladesh/India/wherever comes in, and where one major explosive would do a lot more damage (both immediate and lasting) than a firecracker in some airplane passenger’s shoe; but improving inspection/security measures in one of those would make CSX and Walmart squeal, so of course those can’t be touched. Individual airline passengers are fair game, and can be shamed into getting mauled or X-rayed for the TSA’s continued funding and enjoyment, but Milton Friedman forbid that some business have to wait another minute for their container of cheap shlock to come off the boat.
OTOH, I wouldn’t be too hard on the TSA checkpoint staff: they make a lot less than most of us do, for far less job satisfaction, and they face abuse from thousands of travelers every day just for doing their jobs. I’m surprised misconduct is so low, actually.
As for the NSA, maybe this will help drive a more practical approach: If there’s no more money for domestic programs because sequestrapocalypse, and there’s all this NSA machinery grinding on, perhaps some of that could be pulled back and reallocated. I wouldn’t expect Ryan, Boehner, Cantor et al to come up with that on their own, though.
boatboy_srq
@Botsplainer: I kinda like “tobacco cheered”. It describes the Carolinas pretty well.
Emma
I am happy with Leahy’s new FISA bill. It will do what needs to be done most — control how the information is used. AND at the same time, bring the Patriot Act closer to sunset. However, I would still like someone to tackle the (actually) bigger problem, which is that too many companies have access to too much of our personal information. You know the poster who mentioned his information being given to Stormfront? As someone whose credit was nearly ruined by a company wielding bad information obtained legally, I am twice as scared about what companies can do.
Hoodie
I’m not sure it’s accurate to equate the TSA and the NSA. The NSA is really doing public eavesdropping, they’re just doing it in a new forum that carries an increasing volume of public activity. Seems like they do it pretty cost effectively. The issue with the NSA program seems to be whether there is adequate oversight and post-action review to cut down on abuse, e.g., they may need to make the FISA warrant process more reviewable and find some way to improve oversight of day to day processes. However, there is a good reason to have the NSA do what it is doing, because so much of modern commerce and other activity happens on the web.
In contrast, the TSA was and is mostly empty security theater. The lesson of 9/11 is that someone could gain control of an airliner and use it as a weapon of mass destruction. The most effective means of preventing that are flight crew awareness and protection, along with proactive intelligence that unravels conspiracies before they can act. The TSA is not a particularly effective way of doing any of that, especially if you take a position that individual flights or passengers are ultimately expendable. People blew up airplanes before 9/11 (e.g., Lockerbie) and we didn’t feel compelled to create a massive security structure to address it. The fact that the TSA is experiencing mission creep and corruption is evidence that its original premise – securing a space provides security against mass casualty events- is flawed. It’s Maginot line thinking.
weaselone
@Ash Can:
I can’t help but think that even Leahy’s efforts regarding the NSA will prove fruitless if he doesn’t also address the corporate side. The obvious workaround for any restrictions on the NSA would be to have the phone companies, internet service providers, etc. store and sift through the data themselves.
Mandalay
@weaselone:
It’s still early, but you have to win Strawman of the Day with that doozy.
deep
@boatboy_srq:
Yep. Exactly.
Keith G
Wait, I thought programs run by a Democratic president, particularly this one, could never be ineffective or poorly managed.
Or, is it just that they can’t be analytically criticized?
Its so confusing.
weaselone
@Mandalay:
Only if you as thoroughly abuse the definition of strawman as Republicans do their chickens.
Xantar
@Keith G:
I’m a proud Obot and I have no problem with the idea that the NSA may be poorly managed or is exaggerating its effectiveness. And that it needs more oversight. I actually think Leahy’s efforts are something Obots and Firebaggers alike should be able to support pretty easily.
cvstoner
If something can be abused, it will be abused. When the NSA talks about safeguards, they’re blowing smoke straight out of their ass.
Cygil
Airport security: Keeping Acela in business since September, 2001.
Anoniminous
When policing agencies get beyond public accountability and oversight its very easy for them to slip into and act on paranoid fantasies. Or become, effectively, criminal organizations, viz,, the Inslaw Case and “suicide” of Danny Casolaro.
FlipYrWhig
@Xantar: co-signed.
balconesfault
A couple years back, I got to my car in the remote lot after flying home, and realized I didn’t have my car keys. Damn. Went back into the terminal to report the loss to the airline lost and found, after calling my wife to ask her to bring another set across town for me, and decided I didn’t want to drag my suitcase around a 95 degree parking lot again so I just slid it under the car.
Well, apparently my attempts to see if I’d left the keys in the car sensitized the alarm or something, because it must have gone off after I’d headed back to the terminal. And when my wife drove me back to the lot after picking me up at the terminal, we found it cordoned off, police cars and cones blocking access. When I got out to walk over to the car I found TSA officials surrounding my vehicle – a good quarter mile from the airport – deciding whether they had to bring in a bomb squad to defuse my suitcase.
Yep. Good use of resources there. Because obviously the terrorists want to blow up a bunch of empty cars simply because they’re in the general geographic area of the airport.
FlyingToaster
@Cygil: Eggzackly.
WarriorGirl is lobbying for a NYC trip; I’d vastly prefer to take Acela, even to that hellhole Penn Station, than try to deal with LaGuardia or JFC or Newark.
Of course, I could Acela to Stamford and transfer to MetroNorth and go into Grand Central, as humans are meant to do. (I used to use this route pre-Acela days for NYC conferences.)
Note: when we fly with WarriorGirl, we don’t have to do the Nude-o-Scan. My husband was impressed with the speed, efficiency, and lack of hassle we got from JetBlue/TSA by both buying the “Extra Space/Extra Speed” seats and travelling with a 5-year-old. Still had to take my sandals off (seriously, folks, sandals?).
cvstoner
@weaselone:
Anything that can be abused, will be abused. When the NSA, or anyone else, talks about oversight, they’re blowing a fat wad of smoke straight out of their ass.
Corner Stone
@balconesfault:
I’m not exactly an apologist for security theater antics, but this actually is an example of something I have no problem with security doing. An unattended bag should be secured, in pretty much any location where people might gather or transit in number.
How they secure that bag is a relevant process question.
Anoniminous
@balconesfault:
You triggered a security protocol. Terrorist have been putting bombs in luggage, leaving the bag in a public space, and then walking away for decades. Any untended luggage is cause for security people to get suspicious. Untended luggage in strange places causes them to push the panic button.
cvstoner
@balconesfault:
And what better way to divert security resources (and their attention) away from the airport than to blow up a car in a nearby parking lot?
Just sayin :-)
Corner Stone
@Lee: Good brief summation of the situation to date, I think. But he used the word “damn” twice so he’s clearly an unserious person. And there was a distinct lack of animus displayed against certain parties that renders the author a severe lack of credibility.
Corner Stone
Can someone tell me why I am supposed to care about the sentencing phase of Ariel Castro?
Corner Stone
@cvstoner:
They don’t have to actually blow anything up. I remember a year or so (?) ago where there was a series of Denial of Service attacks against I think an airport in London (?) where someone left an empty suitcase in a bathroom. After they closed down whole sections of the airport a few times it was pretty clear what the goals were.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh no he dint!
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: To be fair, he wasn’t really accusing the Obama admin of anything. He was simply stating he could do a better job of being president.
cvstoner
@Corner Stone:
Indeed — and that would be the asynchronous nature of security. The best way to keep something safe is to use several layers of simple, independent, and overlapping security systems. The more complex a system is, the easier it is to subvert.
boatboy_srq
@Hoodie: Security theatre, whether onstage or in the light/sound booth, is theatre: performance art meant to distract from the actual issue.
The TSA is supposed to make us feel “safe” traveling by making it (un)equally uncomfortable for (nearly) everyone. The NSA data collection is supposed to make us feel “safe” by scooping up emails/texts/chats by Teh Terrrrrrists (along with everything else) so they could be read and identified and the senders pursued and prosecuted/eliminated. Remember both programs are the product of the same school that thinks MTR is a good way to mine coal: grab the whole mountain and shake it, and enough resource drops out to be useful (we just won’t talk about what happens to the rest).
boatboy_srq
@Hoodie: Security theatre, whether onstage or in the light/sound booth, is theatre: performance art meant to distract from the actual issue.
The TSA is supposed to make us feel “safe” traveling by making it (un)equally uncomfortable for (nearly) everyone. The NSA data collection is supposed to make us feel “safe” by scooping up emails/texts/chats by Teh Terrrrrrists (along with everything else) so they could be read and identified and the senders pursued and prosecuted/eliminated. Remember both programs are the product of the same school that thinks MTR is a good way to mine coal: grab the whole mountain and shake it, and enough resource drops out to be useful (we just won’t talk about what happens to the rest).
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Corner Stone:
Oh, no biggie then. You do that all the time.
Paul in KY
@deep: Those guys are all loser weenies.
Yatsuno
You answered your own question.
mclaren
C’mon, guy. Get a clue.
All this surveillance isn’t about detecting terrorists, it’s about repressing the American people. The DHS wasn’t formed to combat domestic terrorism, it was formed to crush labor unions and living-wage protests and mass uprisings like the Occupy Movement before they can snowball.
Don’t believe me?
Source: “DoD Training Manual: Protests are “Low-Level Terrorism,” Salon.com, 14 June 2009.
Then there’s Operation Mockingbird, a long-standing CIA operation that funneled cash to prominent American journalists in order to influence their opinion on foreign and domestic policy:
Source: Wikipedia entry on “Operation Mockingbird.”
(Wait for various commenters to rush forward to claim that Operation Mockingbird has been suspended even though there’s no evidence that it was ever ended. Of course, you can always post links to pdfs of internal CIA documents together with notarized signatures of witnesses ready to testify under oath that Operation Mockingbird is no longer operating. Got any of those?)
You are aware that the first CIA operation was against one of our allies, Italy — a black op designed to discredit the left-wing political candidates and prevent them from winning the 1948 Italian elections, aren’t you?
America’s entire so-called “intelligence” and “security” apparatus has nothing to do with combating subversion by enemy spies or terrorist attacks by enemy agents — it’s all about influencing the American media by putting pro-military spin on all stories that come out of U.S. newspapers and TV news networks. It’s all about spinning all the news stories so that protesters gathering in mass demonstrations for a living wage become “subversive elements” intent on “destroying American society” and “undermining our way of life.”
Get a fucking clue, people. The evidence is overwhelming.
mclaren
@weaselone:
There’s a slight difference between corporations and the U.S. government.
Corporations can’t kidnap you and slam a black hood over your head and haul you off to a secret prison in a third world country to torture you until you’re insane, then take you out back behind the chemical sheds and shoot you in the head and bury you in an unmarked grave.
Also, corporations tend not blow up six-year-children and brides in weddings parties with drones.
LAC
“All members of Congress were provided with the information that NSA was collecting metadata on all telephone calls in the United States via a 5-page letter that could be viewed in a classified setting in both 2009 and again in 2011 prior to voting for approval of this program. Any Congressperson that suggests they didn’t know about the scope of this program prior to that vote is either lying or never took the opportunity that was provided to them to learn about it. ”
Before we give Leahy too much credit, i would want to know where he was all that time. Before we get into the overlong conspiracy laden “they’re punching real hippies, man!” unraveling of mclaren.
daverave
I flew out of Philly on Useless Air a couple of weeks ago and the security lines, which were tightly bunched, held a couple of planes worth of folks waiting submissively for their chance to be scanned and metal-detected. Shouldn’t there be a line of security before those lines to prevent any terrorist acts?
Then I got to be manhandled very thoroughly by some poor TSA schlub because of my artificial hips. That took a good five minutes (“I’m going to run the back of my hand up the inside of your thigh until I meet resistance”) Absolutely crummy job but someone’s gotta do it, amirite? I felt very… satisfied by the theatre.
mclaren
@LAC:
Citing documented facts is obviously a “conspiracy theory.”
mclaren
@daverave:
Bruce Schneier has mentioned many different ways in which the TSA’s bogus security theater can be bypassed. Print out a boarding pass on your own computer and switch it for the one they give you, enter the airport dressed as a baggage handler, then change clothes inside the air terminal in a bathroom and use a preprinted boarding pass, and so on.
Nothing the TSA does adds any actual security. The two big increases in airline security were: 1) reinforcing cockpit doors after 9/11, and 2) airline passengers are now on the alert and will aggressively respond to any perceived threats on board the plane, making hijackings or hostage-taking impossible. Viz., Flight 93.
More by Schneier on the harms of post-9/11 TSA security theater here.
Mike G
At some point, those agencies are going to have to show that Rapiscans, collecting every phone call to Mom and Dad, and squirreling away every Facebook “like” in a giant database actually makes us safer.
Or not. A large part of the population still insists the $2 trillion invasion/occupation of Iraq was “worth it” because Freedom/Bald Eagles/Jesus. The Security State is like a religion to these people, and to question it is to question their manhood. No amount of taxpayer money or electronic proctocology is enough when it comes to the government function of bullying and punishing.
I’m still waiting for the “government waste” fetishist teatards to express any outrage about the $12 billion in American cash that went missing in Iraq.
El Cid
@Mike G: We were just helping to launch a free and unregulated marketplace.
LAC
@mclaren: @mclaren: You are just so sad and paranoid. You just spew endless “sky is falling” stories and and even if it is disproven, it is because there’s a conspiracy to disprove the story and no one will admit it so then they….arrrrgh!!! Should we just line up next to you and share a bullet then?
Look, I enjoyed the stoner’s explanation of the dollar sign symbol and why that made George Washington a pot head too (“Dazed and Confused”) but there comes a point where this seige mentality that some of us are engaging in is like belly lint – Good to get out, but you can’t make it your job, or turn people off going on about it like a demented parrot.
We have legitimate security issues, legitimate privacy concerns, and an aversion to boots on the ground war – all at a time of great technology. Where we go is in our hands…at the voting booth. All these issues require legal oversight. And handing the reins over, whether it be through indifference or the results of temper tantrums, to those lawmakers who are not thoughtful is a recipe for disaster. We will end up with either a real security state (try China or Russia) or a preventable breach of security that could cost lives.
Another Halocene Human
@Baud: Probably the same way you determine the efficacy of drugs. Of course there are confounding factors.
Security badly needs a concept of “number needed to treat”. Instead it’s all about getting paid for selling big iron (MRI machines, etc).