General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency testified before Congress last year that his agency does not “willingly” data mine information on U.S. citizens. Now, thanks to Edward Snowden’s whistle blowing, document leaks and confirmation by senior intelligence officers, we know that Gen. Alexander’s revelations were not entirely accurate. So, just for the record, the NSA has been indiscriminately data mining American’s emails.
According to recent reports from the The Washington Post, the NSA’s previously undisclosed program last year gathered over 700,000 email addresses from websites like Yahoo, Facebook and Gmail during the course of a single day. This would make the NSA email-address intake 250 million per year. The Post confirms that the NSA acted contrary to its director’s assertion, collecting contact lists from email databases and instant-messaging accounts.
Fox News reported that the NSA is not interested in private information but intelligence on valid foreign-intelligence targets, human traffickers and drug smugglers. Further, the NSA makes the case that they “operate in accordance with rules approved by either the Attorney General or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as appropriate, designed to minimize the acquisition, use, and dissemination of any such information.”
Perhaps this caveat would seem less troubling if it wasn’t for the hive of American emails and telecommunications being used as a depository of information beckoning to be sifted and churned at a moment’s notice. Gen. Alexander had to repeat himself at a cyber-security conference in September as suspicions of the NSA’s already-suspect activities were rising. TechWeb reports that Gen. Alexander’s agency’s personal investigations into American emails have been instrumental in stopping at least 54 terrorist attacks. In contrast, one week of terrorist activity caused 950 deaths in Kenya, Iraq, and Yemen alone. Gen. Alexander went on to say he fears having a debate in Congress as to the legality of the NSA’s practices might prove detrimental to the country’s safety.
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So, the agency has prevented more terrorist activities than four third-world governments that have a fraction of the security infrastructure. The NSA’s efforts are certainly impressive on paper. So, why does Gen. Alexander want to stop at just emails? The implication is that terrorists are exclusively tied to using email. Obviously, in a digital world they are more likely to use email, but then is the NSA willfully avoiding part of its unconstitutional authority, granted so Americans could be safe, just to protect privacy rights? Or, if this is too big an undertaking, why hasn’t this already been delegated to the postal service for immediate implementation?
Constitutionality and justified threats aside, Gen. Alexander still has no answer for his mischaracterization of what a “willing” collection of data means. Or, perhaps he does, and the American public has inappropriately deciphered the word “willing” to mean a moral and lawful approval of actions without reservations. Understanding the definition of “willing” as set forth by Gen. Alexander just might require the processing power of one of the agency’s supercomputers. Most likely we will never know the definition. For now, we can trust that our ignorance is for our own good.