The recent interviews on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" featuring NSA whistleblower, Russell Tice, have not generated any significant media response. The lack of media interest in Tice's allegations is particularly surprising. After all, he is explicitly claiming that journalists -- and their financial records -- were a target of warrantless NSA wiretapping.
I don't understand why the press is silent here, but one thing is clear TIA (or whatever it is now called) still exists. It's not going to be dismantled so we may as well use it for something legal. Here's something I suggested two years ago that we can all get behind:
Eradication of Cocaine Trafficking....
Let's assume everyone involved in this program is committed to the rule of law and seriously interested in protecting America from threats. Don't worry, it won't cost you anything to make that assumption.
Even if that is all true, we still have a problem. How do you demonstrate the program's value to the people who pay for it without sharing classified information? It turns out, Ronald Reagan had a solution to that sort of problem; he called it "trust but verify." We can apply that approach to solve this impasse while meeting the legitimate needs of all the stakeholders. Here's the proposed test:
Demonstrate the existing NSA program works by using it
to eradicate cocaine traffic into the United States.
Back when Hayden was confirmed, I calculated the probability of finding a terrorist plot by data mining massive data sets assuming no baseline information. The math is here. And you can see the odds are astronomically long. In a separate post, Mything The Point of "Positive Results," I focused on the impact of false positives -- hits that look right but aren't. Based on those numbers, you would generate about a billion false positives for every legitimate hit. Let me put that in perspective. A potential terrorist is about 300 times more likely to be killed by lightning than identified with this approach.
Clearly we need a test with better odds of success.
If TIA was really working to catch criminals (and terrorists are nothing but piratical criminals) they could demonstrate it to everyone's satisfaction without compromising any of the internal workings of their system. We also don't want to compromise legal and legitimate law enforcement activities. Fortunately, such a test is possible... even desirable.
Unlike future terrorist attacks, cocaine trafficking is a well-documented phenomenon. There is no mystery where it is grown. There is no mystery where it is processed. There is no mystery how the cocaine gets into the country. In other words, there are plenty of nodes to start with for any sort of network analysis. That dramatically increases the prospects of finding useful relationships.
Many people think of "mules" as a major source of cocaine trafficking. Actually, the overwhelming majority of cocaine entering the US arrives via container shipping and general aviation. So how many containers are coming into the country each year? About 10 Million. How many general aviation flights? Less than a hundred thousand. Those are big numbers, but they are peanuts compared to the 1 trillion phone records the NSA is supposedly data mining.
In addition to smaller numbers to search, cocaine trafficking also has a baseline history of interdiction data. The Coast Guard, by itself, seizes one half to one third of all the cocaine entering the country. We know where those ships came from. We know who the shipping agents were. We know where they were heading. We know a lot about the supply chain. The same is true for cocaine busts involving general aviation.
Here's the math: Assume you have 10 Million container shipments and 100 have cocaine on board. Now assume your algorithm for detecting a suspicious transaction gives you a false positive 1 in a thousand times. Assume your algorithm misses a suspicious transaction 1 in a thousand times.
The big difference between this test and the proposed terrorist surveillance program is we have cut our total number of events from 1 trillion to a mere 10 million. That lowers the odds of finding a drug shipment to 1 in 100. Let me put that in perspective. That is more likely than getting dealt a straight in a game of poker!
Based on the numbers, a system that can locate just one terrorist plot should be able to locate well over 50% of the cocaine shipped into the United States. Add that to the cocaine already being seized by law enforcement and you will wipe out the cocaine trade.
You can increase the odds even more by focusing geographically. State and local officials seize about one third of the cocaine that gets past federal authorities. When you break down those numbers by state, it turns out over 90% of those seizures occur in ten border states or ports of entry: Texas, Florida, Illinois, California, New York, Arizona, Missouri, New Jersey, Georgia, and Louisiana (in decreasing order).
The benefits of demonstrating this program's usefulness by eradicating cocaine traffic into the US would be clear to everyone. Successful conclusion of this demonstration won't require publishing classified information. It won't require any acts of faith on the part of the general public. It won't require assaulting anyone's civil liberties. The results would be obvious and independently verifiable. The benefits would be immediate and substantial. In addition to saving a lot of taxpayer money, we will also be denying a revenue stream to arms dealers and terrorists.
Finally, there is a residual benefit to this approach. Many people are concerned about the possibility of some WMD being shipped into the country. Anyone contemplating such an attack would have to think long and hard about their ability to evade detection if they knew they had to run a gauntlet even drug dealers could not beat. I'm not saying this would prove the system will protect us from terrorists, but you have to admit it would be a hell of a deterrent.
The bottom line: if their system was capable of finding just ONE terrorist plot... it should be able to shut off 50% of the cocaine traffic. The coast guard ALREADY interdicts between 30% and 50% of the cocaine coming in. Between the two, that would be a death blow to blow.
You may have noticed that under the previous administration that never happened. Why? Because under the Bush administration that was not what this system was used for. You know it. I know it. It was about building a national network of names for total control in the event of a government emergency. Sure, that sounds paranoid, but I remind you that last summer the NSA computer farm almost shut down because of lack of power in the surrounding power grid. You think they are just playing solitaire? Well, times have changed. I say we shuffle the deck and play a new game.
UPDATE: The folks who focus on things like "war on drugs" and whether or not coke should be legal miss the point. Unlike most drugs coke production is limited geographically. It's manufacture and distribution is tied into a network of international criminals. These are allied with governments and non-government actors. They prey upon innocent populations through violence and extortion. Say what you want about the choices, etc. The fact is that drug trafficking in coke is a major problem for people seeking freedom and democracy in Latin America. It is also a major source of funding for clandestine wars. It does us no good. As one commentator noted, it would be interesting to see the DEA go after the CIA :)
Finally, and most importantly, I am not suggesting we use any illegal means here. I'm also not talking about cocaine users here. I am focused only on TRAFFICKERS. They are a breed apart. They are hard-core criminals. If the system for analysing data is effective it should be useful when legally applied.