How the NSA spied on Americans before the Internet

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/23/how-the-nsa-spied-on-americans-before-the-internet/

by constapop • 13 years ago

82 7 13 years ago

mikegioia• 13 years ago

This puts the history of the NSA's work into perspective, but all this really seems to convey is that (a) the NSA has never had proper oversight and (b) the NSA probably never will have proper oversight.

It also seems that they were caught with their tail between their legs in the late 90s which may have been the call to arms after 9/11:

    ...the House Intelligence Committee concluded, in 1999, that it 
    was "in serious trouble." It reportedly spent the years leading 
    up to Sept. 11, 2001, without enough money or leadership to 
    process "the huge volumes of TV, fax, telephone and other 
    signals" that fiber-optic cables transmit, the L.A. Times 
    reported in 2000.

I guess it was an information overload during that period in Internet history where the NSA simply did not have the resources or capability to store everything, hence this datacenter in Utah.

I wonder if they have anything to do with the bandwidth caps we've seen over the last few years. It wouldn't surprise me if the USG was trying to force people (through TelCo bandwidth caps) to not exponentially grow their bandwidth usage, hoping to prevent the same problems from a decade ago.

samstave• 13 years ago

I wonder if they have anything to do with the bandwidth caps we've seen over the last few years.

That is an amazing thought. How could we find out about this.

"We can only subcribe the surveillance system to XK/user/month -- tell the Telcos"

mindslight• 13 years ago

Or they just force the telcos to hold off on upgrading their backbones until the associated black rooms have been upgraded. Much simpler, same effect.

mpyne• 13 years ago

It also seems that they were caught with their tail between their legs in the late 90s which may have been the call to arms after 9/11:

Yes, that among other things. NSA had details on one of the hijackers, FBI had other details, but there were institutional barriers between them cooperating about it, and in any event there was no real clear directive for either NSA or FBI to be pursuing counter-terrorism.

In fact Bush was well on his way to winding down what existing efforts were in place toward counter-terrorism, to instead prioritize on saber rattling with the large-scale military forces.

As a result of 9/11 (which elicited its own Congressional investigation) the NSA, along with the rest of the nation's intelligence community, was charged with ensuring that they connected the dots on all future terrorist acts before they happen.

But unfortunately Congress still has yet to engage with proper oversight or accountability measures, nor to force the installation of transparency measures commensurate with the scale of the intelligence activities they directed.

gcb02• 13 years ago

If you're on a phone/tablet and get desktop version of sites, click this for the print page... Otherwise bad ads and dumb JavaScript on that page will rape your device

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/23...

jbattle• 13 years ago

First off - thanks for the tip. Second - I'd suggest reconsidering the casual use of the word "rape". I understand what it means in this context but think such usage trivializes rape and in some sense normalizes it or makes it "cute".

gcb02• 13 years ago

i could have used 'kill your device' and it wouldn't be banalizing killing in any way. quit the kneejerk

How the NSA spied on Americans before the Internet

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