When more = less

IN THE NEWS
The wiretapping brouhaha apparently has enough intelligence professionals outraged that they are talking to The New York Times and other news outlets. The basic theme is, Not only was this program illegal, it was just plain ineffective. The Times article does a creditable job of relaying these concerns from within the intelligence world, but it needs a little more explanation.

The NSA, like any other intelligence agency, is a producer of intelligence. It has two primary consumers: (1) top-level decision-makers who want a daily, global picture of what's happening in the world; and (2) the operational organizations, such as the FBI and the Department of Defense, who may use this information at any level of their organization. The NSA may relay information of cosmic significance, such as a communications intercept indicating the Iranians are about to test a nuclear bomb. More commonly, they produce intelligence that's more tactically relevant, such as the clues to the possible location of Ayman al-Zawahri.

The intelligence producer should select, analyze, and package information according to the needs of the intelligence consumer. In the last decade or so, the NSA has been refining these techniques to help fight terrorists. Top-level decision-makers get their intelligence briefings, which include the results of NSA intercepts. The tactical people get the information they requested, which is often more focused on a particular target of interest (Al Qaeda, white supremacists, etc.). In other words, you tailor "the product" (intelligence) to the stated needs of "the customer."

According to the last two weeks of revelations, the NSA and other intelligence producers were ordered to go collect as much intelligence as possible, then shovel it into the hungry maw of their consumers. Unfortunately, the consumers were in no way prepared for the amount of information, much of it missing the usual filtering, organization, and analysis that makes it immediately useful to them. While that's not surprising--more intelligence is not necessarily more useful intelligence--what is a bit shocking is to hear that the consumers are still complaining of being buried in lots of useless information:

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"

While we might surmise that the NSA has made some improvements, it's clear that the problem is still there. At the end of the day, this avalanche of information may have made it harder to piece together real terrorist plots, buried under a pile of information that wasn't even requested in the first place. In that sense, the wiretaps may have been more than illegal: they may actually have made us less safe.

Comments

[jeff]

Worse than a crime, a mistake.

[hawaii helicopter tours]

Improvements are building fast. Citizens from the country are happy about it.