US Government accused of communications data retention and data mining

12/05/2006

The U.S. National Security Agency is accused of approaching three land-line phone companies in the U.S. and collecting traffic data on millions of telephone communications for the purpose of data mining.

According to reports from USA Today, the NSA is secretly collecting tens of millions of domestic phone records from AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth. A fourth company, Qwest, rejected the request from the U.S. Government.

Normally in U.S. law, access to communications traffic data requires the use of subpeonas or court warrants. Though access can also be achieved through a National Security Letter, to use this expansive legal tool for such a large swathe of data would be unprecedented and verging on illegality.

President Bush claims that the surveillance was legal and aimed solely at al Qaeda. His statement is pasted below. The Government is being very careful in their statements: they are differentiating between communications interception (recording and listening to communications), and communications traffic data collection (approaching telephone companies for data), and communications traffic data access (actually viewing specific data on specific communications), and communications traffic data analysis (data mining the data collected to decide which should be accessed).

In their carefully worded statements the Government claims
- they are not intercepting millions of phone calls (instead they are monitoring traffic data)
- they are not accessing data on Americans (instead they are collecting millions of files and then analysing/data mining to decide who is worthy of further scrutiny)
- they are focusing on combating terrorists (they decide to access/view the files on terrorist suspect communications)

In many ways this is similar to what is already taking place in Europe where telecommunications companies have to retain communications traffic data in case the police want access. The differentiating factor is that in this case the US Government wanted access to vast amounts of this data in order to mine that data to identify which communications are of interest. In Europe, technically the police would have to ask for data of a specific type (e.g. all phone calls made in a specific zone at a specific time; all phone calls received by a group of individuals, etc.) and then this data could be analysed/mined.

But this is not to say that the situation in Europe is better: there are currently no reporting regimes on the extent of data that is being accessed by the police and security services so there is no way to know how much data they are accessing and analysing. It is entirely plausible that a similar regime exists in Europe and around the globe depending on the nature of the relationships between Governments and the telecommunications sectors.

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President Bush's Statement on May 11, 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH: After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying.

Today there are new claims about other ways we are tracking down al Qaeda to prevent attacks on America. I want to make some important points about what the government is doing and what the government is not doing.

First, our intelligence activities strictly target al Qaeda and their known affiliates. Al Qaeda is our enemy and we want to know their plans.

Second, the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval.

Third, the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat.

Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates.

So far, we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil. As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy. Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack, and we will do so within the laws of our country.

Thank you.

Q Sir, how is collecting phone calls not an intrusion on privacy?

(No response from the president.)

Related:
European Parliament calls on search engine companies to spy on all EU citizens
Anti-Terrorism Policy Home Page
Communications Surveillance Home Page
European Parliament approves communications data retention
PI forges coalition to call on European Parliament to reject data retention