The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

by hendzen • 12 years ago

213 50 12 years ago

the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.

"I've got nothing to hide..."

The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that its operations kill terrorists with the utmost precision.

Note that "accuracy" and "precision" aren't the same thing. A sharp knife is precise, but if you slice in the wrong place, it's not being used accurately. Noting that the language here isn't a quote but a description from Scahill and Greenwald.

yardie• 12 years ago

Note that "accuracy" and "precision" aren't the same thing.

Drilled into us early in freshman engineering classes.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies.

Well, it's not like they believe their targets are human, anyway. Their lives are worth nothing to those analysts, innocent or not.

maaku• 12 years ago

I don't think it is analysts that make such a call.

vincie• 12 years ago

I don't know anything about how they target their victim, but I am assuming the have very little time between seeing the victim and deciding to execute him/her/them. So I suspect an algorithm makes the call.

asgard1024• 12 years ago

They can always resign..

On the other hand, I was reading through Stanley Milgram's Obedience some time ago (a book about his famous experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment).

One interesting part was, that in some of the minds of the subjects ("teachers"), the "learner" could not do or say anything to "convince the teacher to stop". This is almost direct quote from a woman which was a hospital sister in real life. So she wasn't evil; she just was conditioned to not consider "learner" as a human being (or his opinion).

So that before we morally judge others..

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Jacob Appelbaum has been saying this for a while already. They use NSA's data to do "signature strikes", i.e. strikes where they may assassinate someone only based on the "harmless metadata" they have on him. Talked to someone who may have talked to someone else from a "terrorist organization"? Well, you may now be on a drone target list.

This is going to get exponentially worse as they move to automated drone assassinations, where they just create an "algorithm" that's supposed to decide who is going to die next.

This is going to be their next logical conclusion, and to them it's "inevitable". Of course, it will be done in secret, too, probably for years before there are even leaks about it. Going by how "accurate" their algorithms are for determining who's American and who's not (there has to be only a 51 percent chance, which is almost like flipping a coin on whether someone is American or not), I imagine this algorithm on who to kill will be pretty loose, too. Better safe and kill more innocent people, than sorry and not kill the right target, is what they will choose for that algorithm.

You could say the rules for killing are already very loose right now, but the killing itself is done manually, and they are somewhat restricted to how many people they can hire for this. Once it's automated, expect the assassinations to rise by an order of magnitude, because it will just be "so easy", and also sending a drone should become much cheaper in 10 years.

Drone assassination defenders have been saying "but would it be any different if they just sent some guy with an F-16 in there to attack the target?". Well, even if such an attack wouldn't be anymore precise and it would still kill a lot of innocent people in that strike, the difference between killing people like that and killing them with automated drones or even manual ones, is about as big as spying on highly expensive targets, and doing "mass collections on everyone". It becomes so easy and so cheap technologically, that their rules for doing that action become radically more loose.

Just as for spying, they will do it simply because they can. Instead of attacking Osama's #2 with an air strike, they will be attacking a lot more people who are just very remotely associated with an organization, and in many of these cases, the decision to kill will be done by loose understanding of what is a target from the NSA mass spying (whether it's the understanding of the people deciding the drone targets now, or the algorithm for the automated drones in the future).

Recommended watching: Daniel Suarez on automated killer robots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI

79522• 12 years ago

War will always lead to the death and injury of people who do not fit within the political motivation of the action. By removing the passion of soldiers we see how bad a lot of the data is. The data was always bad, but that was overshadowed by the suffering caused by actual malevolence. If a war is justifiable for humanitarian reasons the risk to civilians is probably worth it. Soldiers have lots of unintended consequences to civilian populations which drones effectively remove; this could be a good thing. Of course people said similar things about area bombing in WWII so I wouldn't bet on it.

aluhut• 12 years ago

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D9u2• 12 years ago

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Hacker News Effect?

[edit] Scratch that, the page finally loaded for me.

farseer• 12 years ago

>"The NSA geolocation system used by JSOC is known by the code name GILGAMESH. Under the program, a specially constructed device is attached to the drone. As the drone circles, the device locates the SIM card or handset that the military believes is used by the target."
>"The agency also equips drones and other aircraft with devices known as “virtual base-tower transceivers” – creating, in effect, a fake cell phone tower that can force a targeted person’s device to lock onto the NSA’s receiver without their knowledge."

This is unsettling! I always suspected this technology was used by law enforcement but equipping killer robots for live missile guidance?!?!?

79522• 12 years ago

Within a few years you will probably be able to buy such a drone for $1000 on the internet. Everyone is going to want one.

patrickk• 12 years ago

We're going to enter into an interesting new phase of spying and counter-spying efforts if drones-as-faux-cell-towers are widely available.

"Citizens of [major urban area]. Do not use your cell phone, rogue foreign agents are spying on us with a drone cell tower. Please wait until further notice - the bogey will be shot down shortly."

Or perhaps more likely:

"All employees are advised to use landlines and encrypted channels for the foreseeable future instead of mobile devices, we have reports of drone cell towers for industrial espionage."

I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. There's been enough Orwellian nightmares come to fruition lately to make these projections seem sane.

jessaustin• 12 years ago

The logical next step: finally we'll get practical, usable EMP guns. After all, it won't be murder to knock down a spy drone, and in many situations the drone operator won't even complain since their activity may have been of questionable legality in the first place.

D9u2• 12 years ago

  “turns out I’m really good at killing people.”

  The president added, “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

Ironic words for a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

x0054• 12 years ago

I think the "change" slogan on all those Obama posters referred to the change to his promises and projected morals.

einhverfr5• 12 years ago

I think they hoped we'd believe in the change we we noted it was stamped with the words "In God We Trust."

dclowd9901• 12 years ago

I'm not sure even George Orwell could've written such a cynical reality.

actual_hacker• 12 years ago

Another huge piece of news from this article:

- "The [SHENANIGANS] operation – previously undisclosed – utilizes a pod on aircraft that vacuums up massive amounts of data from any wireless routers, computers, smart phones or other electronic devices that are within range."

- "The operator describes how, from almost four miles in the air, he searched for communications devices"

- "VICTORYDANCE, he adds, “mapped the Wi-Fi fingerprint of nearly every major town in Yemen.”

This is something we didn't even know is possible: drones are cataloguing the MAC addresses, BSSIDs, ESSIDs (unique identifiers for things like your iPhone and the wireless adapter on your PC, laptop, or tablet) of people's personal electronics, at the scale of cities, from so high up in the air you can't even see the drone, and they're creating "fingerprints" from it. That means what devices "belong" in what city.

They don't suspect these people of any wrongdoing or criminal activity - how could they? They're monitoring entire cities. This is exactly what Snowden warned us about: the untargeted mass surveillance of entire populations.

The next time you hear about domestic drones for police and "homeland security," remember this article.

[The Day We Fight Back rally](http://www.thedaywefightback.org) is tomorrow.

contingencies• 12 years ago

Sorry, we did know that was possible. It's well reported and obviously possible. Search even for amateur cantenna ranges and you'll see how far you can easily pull an SSID from (hint: many kilometres).

If the above was news to you, then get more worried: Google catalogues SSIDs versus GPS from hundreds of millions (billions?) of client android devices. Even ones that aren't logged in. This is why geolocation is fast with android devices. Unsure, but it's quite likely that Apple does the same.

rgbrenner• 12 years ago

actual_hacker: you've been hellbanned. You only have two comments.. so I'm guessing someone didn't like your nic(?)

ZoFreX• 12 years ago

Perhaps they were banned based on their metadata.

scrrr• 12 years ago

This is all very depressing.

OT: Same picture used in FAZ-article in 2012 [1]. Can you search stockphoto dot com for "Predator drone"?

[1] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/obamas-drohnenkri...

jsmeaton2• 12 years ago

Some unnamed source says that targets aren't double checked and that maybe innocents that have been lent a phone have been killed. This article is extremely light for such length.

ItendToDisagree• 12 years ago

I think the point of the article was how they are doing the data collecting and making the decisions (for which they provided statements from a named source as well as the leaked documents).

The thought that targeting a 'cell phone/sim', as opposed to the actual person, could cause unexpected deaths seemed to be more of a 'logical next step' rather than a substantiated claim (although it has been shown elsewhere that unexpected deaths are happening with some frequency due to drone strikes/targeting).

jsmeaton2• 12 years ago

that unexpected deaths are happening with some frequency due to drone strikes/targeting

No doubt. The behaviour is extremely troubling, and the "collateral damage" should be considered war crimes IMO.

I'm doubting the authenticity of the source and that geolocation alone is being used for targeting, without any secondary confirmation. I find that very difficult to take at face value, although in our current climate I wonder why I should.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

some of the problem...

Right now I get texts and voice mail from people attempting to contact the former owner of the SIM Identity I have..it happens any time you buy a prepaid phone..sometimes you get a previously owned SIM id..

Guess where this most active as far as buying a prepaid phone?

Developing countries such as Africa and Middle East..

This is a very highly political volatile situation waiting to blow up in a Presidents face.

Its not will it happen but only a matter of when

einhverfr5• 12 years ago

This is a very highly political volatile situation waiting to blow up in a Presidents face.

You have to look at this in the overall picture of military size and spending though as well. Since WWII, with a few blips, the size of our armed forces (in the US) has been slowly decreasing, while military spending has been increasing at a relatively steady rate (outside of actual war-time expenses) regardless of who is in office.

But the spending isn't equal. It is going up in critical areas, including tactical aircraft at an exponential rate. At current projections unless something changes, in 2054, the entire defence budget will be enough to buy one tactical aircraft. Norman Augustine pointed that out in the mid-1980's, but we are still on track.

So here's what I see, and it is genuinely scary:

I see a shrinking US military armed with ever more-effective force-multiplying weapons (but insufficient people) trying very hard to maintain control over key strategic areas they see in the world, while the weapons are getting stronger and the human side is getting weaker. There is no way this will continue for very long. It will stir up more and more justified resentment in the world which will face a country less and less prepared to deal with it.

All of this is a proxy for having real strength in arms.

samstave5• 12 years ago

Or maybe there will be a world war to reset the cycle, kill off tons of uppity civilians and let those that can reap astounding profits and lock down more control over the experience of the civilization we have...

Sami_Lehtinen• 12 years ago

Was it really an accident, when Google also mapped radio networks and captured data. While they were collecting street view information. Or if it was done on purpose.

einhverfr5• 12 years ago

I think that would be hard to do by accident.

flavor8• 12 years ago

The oscar nominated documentary Dirty Wars is good background on this program (basically about Jeremy Scahill & his investigation into JSOC).

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

Interesting how so many people now know so many things about the most secret organization in the world. There must be a lot of money in writing stories about it.

frandroid• 12 years ago

There's a difference between secretive and secret. The NSA existence is no secret.

zequel2• 12 years ago

I'm personally torn. It's asymmetric warfare. They didn't care about the thousands of innocents in the towers. If we let the Taliban regroup, another 9/11 is probable and the next strike (imo) will be at least a dirty bomb and possibly nuclear so I don't think we can afford to fight cleanly. You can be righteous as you want but if Manhattan gets nuked, the economic cost to the US is incalculable.

Veratyr• 12 years ago

"In bin Laden's November 2002 "Letter to America",[3][4] he explicitly stated that al-Qaeda's motives for their attacks include: Western support for attacking Muslims in Somalia, supporting Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya, supporting the Indian oppression against Muslims in Kashmir, the Jewish aggression against Muslims in Lebanon, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia,[4][5][6] U.S. support of Israel,[7][8] and sanctions against Iraq.[9]"

To me, the current series events looks like this:

- U.S. Assisted or condoned a bunch of violence against muslims (including civilians)

- A group of radical muslim terrorists decided to retaliate with violence against U.S. civilians

- U.S. retaliates with a full scale invasion of the countries most likely inhabited by terrorists and proceeds to kill civilians through incompetence or lack of care

- U.S., unwilling to declare war against countries that aren't overtly hostile, proceeds to repeat killing of terrorists and civilians through incompetence or lack of care

I hate to say this because I by no means condone civilian deaths but the U.S. has been the one escalating this war and a dirty bomb or somesuch seems like a balanced (although by no means just) response to the actions of the U.S..

Just compare the numbers:

- American civilians killed by terrorists: 2977 [1]

- Middle eastern civilians killed during the Iraq invasion alone: 120,976 – 134,149 [2]

That's 40 middle eastern civilians killed for every American.

I think the longer this war continues, the more enemy combatants you're going to find and the more desperate and bitter they'll become. How many of these terrorists do you think are fighting against the U.S. out of insanity or blind religious fervour? I think the majority of them will have been created after seeing their families, friends and countrymen killed by western forces in their homelands and by continuing such strikes, you're only creating more of them.

I can't see any clean way out of this other than pulling out completely and trying to make amends for the atrocities the U.S. government has committed.

Now you're encouraging the U.S. to kill more of these people on the grounds that they might retaliate for the people you've already killed. Doesn't this seem wrong to you? The more people you kill, the more people are going to fight you.

Just think, pretend America was peaceful and didn't have a trillion dollar military. One day a few stupid Americans go and kill ~12000 Chinese civilians. China responds by launching a full scale invasion of the United States and kills over 480000 civilians, including a number of your friends and family at first you fear them. Over the years they start to get less discriminate because previously rational people have decided to take up arms against the aggressors. More and more of the people you know are dying around you because they were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe you're in a small town and half the people you know are killed by an indiscriminate robotic strike from above. Wouldn't even you be eventually pushed over the edge and want to start fighting back?

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say but it seems to me the problem with this was is that the U.S. is _creating_ the terrorists they're there to fight.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_...

[2] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

//rant

zequel2• 12 years ago

You're assuming innocent people like myself actually have a say in US foreign policy, so I guess middle eastern people should kill me? I hate US foreign policy, example 1, Cuban embargo, how's that working out? Or invade Iraq when we need forces in Afghanistan, so instead of 1 effective war, let's fight 2 ineffective wars. Guess what? I always vote against the sitting congress and I haven't voted for a sitting president. I have as much say an Iraqi. So yeah, kill me and see what it does.

tantalor• 12 years ago

There is plenty of precedent for strikes based on hunches and guesses. For example, they confirmed OBL was in Abbottabad only after killing him,

"no U.S. spy agency was ever able to capture a photograph of bin Laden at the compound"

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

The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program

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