NSA Disruption of Stock Exchange Bomb Plot Disputed

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/nsa-stock-exchange/

by shill • 13 years ago

137 80 13 years ago

jessaustin• 13 years ago

Fowler declined to comment any further, including whether he would seek to reopen the case, given the government admitting that secret, and constitutionally suspect, methods were used to gain access to his phone records.

Well that's troubling.

NickNameNick• 13 years ago

It could be an interesting point.

Does any investigation which used data from the NSA, especially early in the investigation to obtain warrants and more data suffer from a 'fruit of the poisoned tree' problem, where much of the evidence used later could be declared inadmissible on appeal?

Has 'trying to be helpful' on the part of the NSA and/or FBI poisoned thousands of convictions?

pilsetnieks• 13 years ago

Considering the article, 50 planned attacks would not result in thousands of convictions, and it isn't known how many of them were in the US (Other countries could have different standards for evidence or may have, in good faith, believed that it was all acquired legally.) Even so, the point was not that some people were convicted of planning attacks but that the attacks were prevented.

Meanwhile, it's the method of prevention that should be disputed, not the fact of it.

epoxyhockey• 13 years ago

spy techniques publicly disclosed two weeks ago had halted some 50 terror attacks in 20 countries

Sean Joyce, modern day Iraqi Information Minister. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf

b62• 13 years ago

It's also irrelevant. We're here to talk about their crime spree, not any supposed good works done during.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

It's definitely NOT irrelevant. At some point (say, alien terrorist invasion that'd kill everyone on Earth), most people will decide it's a worthwhile tradeoff. If it only stopped one small bomb against a concrete statue, people would decide the other way. There is certainly a crossover point.

The crossover is probably not even close to being reached, but discussion about it is certainly relevant. Many people believe they'd be under major attacks without these secret program. Dismissing their claims doesn't further the discussion.

b62• 13 years ago

I take your point. But if there's a credible threat, they should say what it is and allow the public to decide whether the law should be amended.

In all probability, there is no credible threat. That's why they choose to do this stuff without consent, and why they've been blocking the courts from ruling on it for years. And this is more of the same -- more manufactured bogeymen, more obfuscation. They want to talk about anything other than their lies and their crimes.

saalweachter• 13 years ago

“Hasanoff relayed that the New York Stock Exchange was surrounded by approximately four streets..."

I love that. It captures downtown Manhattan perfectly.

SimHacker3• 13 years ago

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Manhattan_distance

gesman• 13 years ago

Well there is a bigger list of plots that has not been prevented.

jaysonelliot2• 13 years ago

This is the wrong argument to have. The issue is not whether or not illegal surveillance has thwarted any plots.

We could put a video camera in every home that can't be turned off and has a direct feed into the local police station. I'm sure that after a few months, the police could then point to all the crimes they'd discovered as a result.

Success rates are not the only consideration when determining whether or not we should give a particular power to the government.

hawkharris3• 13 years ago

My sentiments exactly. A high success rate does not justify violating constitutional limits on government or making people forfeit basic civil liberties.

thufry3• 13 years ago

They're not the only consideration, but they are a major consideration. The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction will depend strongly on whether that infraction prevents 1 death a year or 1,000,000.

jaysonelliot2• 13 years ago

A privacy infraction that prevents a million deaths a year still has to be weighed against other ways to prevent those deaths without violating people's rights.

Yes, the easiest way to do something might be to violate the Constitution, but that doesn't mean it's the only way.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction will depend strongly on whether that infraction prevents 1 death a year or 1,000,000.

The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction probably depends a lot more on how scary the stories of potential harms used to defend it are than the actual harms that it has prevented or would be likely to prevent in the future.

uvdiv• 13 years ago

This isn't always the case [0], even with very neutral questions and no media priming.

[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/

jmilkbal2• 13 years ago

There are also so many more things that kill more Americans each year than terrorism which receive barely any attention. The disproportionate amount of focus on terrorism seems less like actual protection (neglected elsewhere) and more like the power grabs they appear to be.

mpyne4• 13 years ago

Or maybe the people are OK with getting to choose to smoke or decide to own handguns or decide to go on the road but feel strongly that it is not permissible to let up on terrorism just because a simple cost/benefit analysis says that we statistically could.

Imperial Japan made the very same mistake in the lead-up to American entry into WWII. They knew of the industrial capability of the U.S. but figured that with hard enough blows in a quick enough time that they could negotiate a settlement in their favor.

What happened instead was that Japan ensured that American public opinion would support their defeat and ensured it would be essentially unconditional, no matter how long it took and however much it cost.

Tloewald2• 13 years ago

This isn't a case of absolute loss of privacy vs. absolute security. Details do in fact matter.

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

But we don't know the details. We know the rounded, approximate number of "terrorist attacks" and we know of one vague storied "plot". There's no details to weigh or consider. We still don't have a complete picture of the surveillance in use, but as far as I'm concerned, a live and archived-accessible account of most all of my online dealings/writings/readings/purchases... constitutes a pretty huge loss of privacy, though clearly not "absolute".

josephlord• 13 years ago

It is pretty close to an absolute loss of privacy[1][2] for at best a modest gain in the already high level of security[3].

[1] At least at the upper end of the speculation. I don't have a good handle on the true situation as I don't trust those who fully know to tell me straight.

[2] The ability to gather metadata, listen in, record and analyze communications means that they are not private even if they are not all listened as we don't know that they are not being monitored.

[3] Defined by the annual US casualty figures due to terrorism.

guelo2• 13 years ago

As Scalia said in dissent in the recent DNA swab ruling,

"Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches."

rtpg2• 13 years ago

In order to query the databases, analysts have to write down an 'articulate suspicion' about the person (i.e. not just "this guy has a funny name" , but a real suspicion). If suddenly one end of the convo. is in the US, you also have to have substantial proof (beyond first-ammendment speech, but actual suspicions of conspiring).

This isn't suspicionless searches. At least the querying of the data isn't.

The biggest question here is whether having the info but not looking at it is the same as not having it for the courts. That'll make or break this program.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

There are two questions in play: can we do it, and should we do it. The empirical usefulness of surveillance is relevant to both.

Re: "can we do it" --

The 4th amendment protects the right to be free against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Not all searches, not monitoring, not tracking. Unreasonable searches. To a lawyer (like 30-35 of 55 framers of the Constitution), "reasonable" is a signal to balance competing interests. That's what it signals now, that's what it signaled 200+ years ago when the Constitution was written.

So in the context of the 4th amendment, that is exactly the right argument to have. Whether a law enforcement tool is effective and necessary is a fundamental question you have to ask in balancing the competing interests of law enforcement and privacy. And that balancing is inherent in deciding whether a search is an "unreasonable" one.

Re: "should we do it -- it is self evident that a determination of whether a technique is effective and useful is instrumental in deciding whether we should use it.

amirmc2• 13 years ago

Shouldn't the first discussion be about the legality and constitutionality? If it is deemed to be such, only then does it make sense to be discussing whether it's reasonable. Or are you suggesting that the first part has already been covered?

NB: I'm not a US Person so I don't know the finer points of your legal system.

coolj• 13 years ago

To a lawyer (like 30-35 of 55 framers of the Constitution), "reasonable" is a signal to balance competing interests.

That is certainly a legal use of "reasonable", but I don't believe it's the one used in the 4th Amendment.

The word "(un)reasonable" is not describing how a decision is made, as used in the expression "reasonable person", which means "someone who uses such qualities as attention, knowledge, intelligence and judgment which a society requires of its members to protect their own interests and the interests of others.”[1]

In the 4th Amendment, "reasonable" is describing a disposition or action derived from or based on examining and validly inferring from evidence, as in "reasonable belief", where it "considers whether an officer acted on personal knowledge of facts and circumstances which are reasonably trustworthy, and that would justify a person of average caution to believe that a crime has been or is being committed..."[2]

Without evidence on which to base belief (suspicion) that a crime has been or is being committed, a search is ispo facto "unreasonable", and therefore unconstitutional, regardless of any benefits to interested parties.

My 2 cents, IANAL, etc.

[1] Barron's, cited at http://www.answers.com/topic/reasonable-man

[2] Barron's cited at http://www.answers.com/topic/reasonable-belief

jdp23• 13 years ago

I totally agree that success rates are far from the only consideration here.

That said this discussion is very important because many people see things in terms of an overall tradeoff -- between security and privacy; or the amount to invest in different kinds of security. No matter whether we think of it that way, many others do. So it matters a lot if all the government's own examples of "success" are not in fact significant successes.

Also, with the current oversight mechanisms many of the government's statements come down to "trust us". When they are seen to be spinning something like this so blatantly, it erodes trust on anything else.

peterpathname• 13 years ago

also important because 'foiling terror plots' may well not be the focus of these programs. demonstrating lack of efficacy on the stated objectives could help expose a wider agenda.

joering2• 13 years ago

But that's where they pushing us into right? I mean, Obama signed more gun's banning laws saying that "if its gonna prevent one dead, it was worth it".

The entire system is continuously pushing us into this state of mind that they can protect all and each of us. And you know what could be the safest place? Prison! I mean, organize it properly so inmates can't fight with each other, lock every one up and viola!! That would prevent lots of kidnaping, deadly car accidents, any type of accidents, even lethal lightning strikes. You gonna prevent lots of dead. Its worth locking every one up; I mean if it can prevent one dead, then its worth it...

guelo2• 13 years ago

Obama hasn't signed any gun banning laws.

rdouble• 13 years ago

The only gun bills Obama has signed into law are the ones making it legal to carry guns in national parks and in checked Amtrak baggage.

codex• 13 years ago

Have these particular programs been ruled illegal?

flyinRyan3• 13 years ago

You're right, but it's an interesting discussion because it shows that not only are we violating privacy rights, etc., but we're doing it for literally no reason.

hawkharris3• 13 years ago

The only thing that scares me more than terrorism is U.S. policymakers' reaction to terrorism.

I'm not sure which civil liberty they'll strike down next in the name of preventing future attacks. Their means-to-an-end attitude exposes not only hysteric, irrational thinking, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitution.

k2enemy• 13 years ago

I understand the spirit of your comment, but there should probably be a long list of things that scare you more than terrorism.

hawkharris3• 13 years ago

I could have taken into account clowns, Stephen King novels and high cholesterol, but for the sake of wordplay and relevance to this discussion, I thought I'd leave it at terrorism.

(Jokes aside, though, I understand your comment and agree that we shouldn't let terrorism paralyze us with fear, as it's intended to; plus, the risks of an American being killed in a terrorist attack are very low.)

dear• 13 years ago

If they lock everyone up, I am sure the crime rate would be zero.

mmagin• 13 years ago

You'd be surprised at all the illicit activity that happens in prisons, at least in the US.

uptown• 13 years ago

I'd also be surprised if any of that crime is counted towards regional crime statistics.

mpyne4• 13 years ago

Let's go the other way then, would the crime rate be zero if the government never obtained any information about anyone?

nano111• 13 years ago

As a bonus, the private prisons would be happy to get all those workers

Alex39172• 13 years ago

This reminds me of that time the FBI caught a black kid taking pictures of his family at Disney World, and then claimed they prevented the next 9/11. Oh wait, this exact same thing has happened literally dozens of times.

tptacek4• 13 years ago

When did this happen? Link?

Alex39172• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Sleeper_Cell

My details were slightly off, but close enough.

flyinRyan3• 13 years ago

There was also the Iranian (Iraqi?) group who had a vacation in Disney World and videoed some of the experience. They were charged with planning a terrorist attack with such ridiculous evidence as "here! The video is looking at a trash can, they're looking for a place to plant the bomb!". Never heard of any convictions out of that case...

aegiso• 13 years ago

It's shocking how fast "terrorism" has been redefined from "use of terror as a means of coersion" to "Islamic fundamentalists" to "evil".

These days politicians mix that word into a sentence with anything or anyone they want gone, and the public supports the cause, for fear of their own safety. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is strong.

But every now and then I like to think back to the original definition. By which it would seem that the United States' response to terrorism has been exponentially more terrorism.

Were it not for all of these shenanigans maybe we could have all healed from 9/11 by now.

redblacktree• 13 years ago

Were it not for all of these shenanigans maybe we could have all healed from 9/11 by now.

This thought created a particularly deep reaction in me.

seeingfurther• 13 years ago

The Stock Exchange isn't a place anymore but a network.

bwhite• 13 years ago

Like many office buildings, it is of pretty good size and houses a goodly number of workers. What sets it apart from almost all other buildings its that it is symbolic. The financial reporters are still frequently "on location" there, it is in downtown Manhattan, and there is an enormous American flag covering the Broad St side of the building.

NSA Disruption of Stock Exchange Bomb Plot Disputed

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