http://ww
w.nsa.gov/releases/relea00072.html
While testifying to a joint hearing of the House and Senate
intelligence committees a year after 9/11, Michael Hayden,
as NSA
Director, testified about NSA's response to 9/11. In
closing, he
said:
38. When I spoke with our workforce shortly after the
September 11th
attacks, I told them that free people always had to
decide where
to draw the line between their liberty and their
security, and I
noted that the attacks would almost certainly push us as
a nation
more toward security. I then gave the NSA workforce a
challenge:
We were going to keep America free by making Americans
feel safe
again.
39. Let me close by telling you what I hope to get out of
the national
dialogue that these committees are fostering. I am not
really
helped by being reminded that I need more Arabic
linguists or by
someone second-guessing an obscure intercept sitting in
our files
that may make more sense today than it did two years
ago. What I
really need you to do is to talk to your constituents
and find out
where the American people want that line between
security and
liberty to be.
40. In the context of NSA's mission, where do we draw the
line between
the government's need for CT information about people
in the
United States and the privacy interests of people
located in the
United States?
Practically speaking, this line-drawing affects the
focus of NSA's
activities (foreign versus domestic), the standard under
which
surveillances are conducted (probable cause versus
reasonable
suspicion, for example), the type of data NSA is
permitted to
collect and how, and the rules under which NSA retains
and
disseminates information about U.S. persons.
41. These are serious issues that the country addressed, and
resolved
to its satisfaction, once before in the mid-1970's. In
light of
the events of September 11th, it is appropriate that we,
as a
country, readdress them. We need to get it right. We
have to find
the right balance between protecting our security and
protecting
our liberty. If we fail in this effort by drawing the
line in the
wrong place, that is, overly favoring liberty or
security, then
the terrorists win and liberty loses in either case.
42. Thank you. I look forward to the committees' questions.
Now we know a small part of what he was really talking
about. At
least he had the balls to mention it. But who among us
could suspect
that when Congress responded by Patriot Act tune-ups making
many kinds
of wiretapping easier, NSA's reaction was to ignore the
laws, treating
the illegality of its operations as a "classified
technique" for
surprising the "secret enemy under our beds".
Anyone who had said NSA
was a rogue that ignored the laws, before or after 9/11, was
either
called paranoid, unrealistically cynical, or "against
us and for the
terrorists".
Read this again:
Practically speaking, this line-drawing affects the
focus of NSA's
activities (foreign versus domestic), the standard under
which
surveillances are conducted (probable cause versus
reasonable
suspicion, for example), the type of data NSA is
permitted to
collect and how, and the rules under which NSA retains
and
disseminates information about U.S. persons.
Now we find out that NSA has crossed each of these lines.
It is now
focusing domestically. It now uses a "reasonable
suspicion" standard
adjudicated by its own staff. It is collecting all types of
data "and
how!", apparently retaining that data indefinitely,
and disseminating
it as it sees fit (to the FBI, at least).
In the open crypto community, we noticed this curious part
of his
speech, but generally didn't engage with him. Personally I
felt that
whatever I said would be ignored, just as my concerns were
ignored
during the entirety of the 1990's, in the Clipper Chip
debacle and the
Export Control madness. We were ignored until we forced
change upon
NSA with the courts and, in partnership with business, in
Congress.
We are having to take the same routes today (though business
is now
against us, since business is up to its eyeballs in spying).
Did anyone else respond to Mr. Hayden at that time, and if
so, what
reaction did you get?
John
PS: NSA's web site SIGINT FAQ still says they don't
"unconstitutionally spy on Americans". It
raises some guff about the
Fourth Amendment and strictly following the laws.
(http://www.ns
a.gov/about/about00020.cfm) But I hear that if you're
discussing something classified, it's not only acceptable
to lie, but
it's actually required.
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