Do Americans have a right to privacy? At what point does national security take precedence over that right? Intelligence expert Amy Zegart discussed those issues and more with Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency. Hayden served as NSA director from 1999 to 2005, and was also CIA director for three years. Zegart is codirector of Stanfords Center for International Security and Cooperation, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business (by courtesy), where she coteaches a course on political risk management with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The following are edited excerpts from their conversation:
The 215 program has to do with telephone metadata. So its not email traffic; its voice. And its not content, its fact of. What the agency gathers is who called whom, when, for how long. Its also within the technical definition of metadata to include locational data. But this program doesnt. Its consciously excluded. What youve got is a record of all phone calls made within the United States or between the United States and overseas thats given to the National Security Agency on a daily basis by the telecom providers.
Its not technically electronic surveillance. These are actually business records kept by the phone company in order to charge you for your phone usage. That data is then bent toward the National Security Agency, where its stored.
A key point about this is that it is unarguably domestic. Its your stuff. Its my stuff. And its put into this large database. Now, that in itself causes a lot of people concern because even with good intent, theres some nervousness about the government having that kind of information.
The NSA view is that, although that is kind of theoretically frightening, as a practical matter, one has to look at what happens to that data in order to make a coherent judgment about it.
That data is locked and inaccessible at NSA except under a very narrow set of circumstances. Number one, the number of people who are allowed to access that data is about two dozen. Actually, the right number is 22. And the way you access the data is through a number, almost always foreign, about which you have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the foreign number is affiliated with terrorist groups.
A specific example so you raid a safe house in Yemen. And you go in with your Yemeni allies and you grab some people. And you grab whats called pocket litter, which is identifiable stuff inside their pockets.
It confirms that, yeah, these guys are who we thought they were. Theyre affiliated with AQAP Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or some other group. And you discover a cellphone that youve never seen before. Now you have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that that cellphone is, in fact, affiliated with a terrorist.
What you then get to do and Im going to be a little cartoonish, here, but its kind of how it works. What you then get to do is walk up to that database, kind of yell through the transom, and say, Hey, anybody in here talk to this phone? And then if a number in the Bronx raises its hand and says, Yeah, I do every Thursday, NSA gets to say to the number in the Bronx, Well, then who do you talk to?
Thats the program. Theres no mining of the data, and theres no pattern development, no pattern recognition. It is: Did any of those phone events that were captured there relate to a phone that we have reason to believe is affiliated with al-Qaida?
View original post here:
Former NSA Head Michael Hayden: The Agency "Cannot Survive Without Being More Transparent"
- WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: NSA critics got lucky because agency had no PR strategy - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- National Speakers Association New Jersey Chapter NSA - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- National Security Agency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- NSA - Satu Hari Di Bulan Juni (TULUS) (COVER) - Video - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- Hong Kong: Protesters blow whistles for NSA whistle blower - Video - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- An Inside Look at the NSA With Whistleblower William Binney (Part 2 of 2) - Video - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- UK: China will offer fig leaves to US exposed by NSA leaker - Assange - Video - April 26th, 2014 [April 26th, 2014]
- NSA ~ (Autodidactism) Whistleblowing - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- Dropping #NSA Knowledge Like a Clumsy Librarian - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- Full Show: Disband The NSA or; Corruption in the Capitol FO SHIZZLE {aTV002} - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- NSA DOCUMENTARY SIX YEARS BEFORE SNOWDEN - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- ShmooCon 2014: The NSA: Capabilities and Countermeasures - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- NSA Knew Of Heartbleed Bug, Refused To Protect Americans - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- Former NSA Head To Become Columnist For Conservative Paper To Discuss Intelligence - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- An Inside Look at the NSA With Whistleblower William Binney (Part 1 of 2) - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- Keynote Address by Shri Shivshankar Menon, NSA at International Seminar on Kautilya - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- NSA Wiretapping: A 4th Amendment Violation?: Blake Norvell at TEDxSMU - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- Hang with Rand: Email Privacy, NSA Spying, and Defending Our Civil Liberties - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- NSA Surveillance and What To Do About It - Bruce Schneier - Video - April 27th, 2014 [April 27th, 2014]
- READER SUBMITTED: NSA CT April 2014 Meeting - April 28th, 2014 [April 28th, 2014]
- MVI 1847 Obama's NSA Denies FOIA About MH 370! - Video - April 28th, 2014 [April 28th, 2014]
- George Galloway's Sputnik: Ewen MacAskill on Guardian / Edward Snowden NSA leaks (26Apr14) - Video - April 28th, 2014 [April 28th, 2014]
- CIA & NSA DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPON ATTACK ON WHISTLE BLOWER - Video - April 28th, 2014 [April 28th, 2014]
- Book TV - 2014 San Antonio Book Festival: Panel on the NSA, Big Brother, and Democracy - Video - April 28th, 2014 [April 28th, 2014]
- NSA Throwdown: John Oliver v. 60 Minutes - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- NSA will sit on security vulnerabilities because of terrorism - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- New water records show NSA Utah Data Center likely behind schedule - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- MVI 1871 NSA Might Be OnTo Me! - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- ZyXEL NSA 325 v2 Hands On - Deutsch / German notebooksbilliger.de - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- German opposition says US should destroy Merkel's NSA file - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- Germany: NSA spying "unacceptable" says SPD - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- NSA Surveillance 2 - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- NSA Surveillance Panel 1 - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- Chalk Talk How Snowden Breached NSA Security - Video - April 29th, 2014 [April 29th, 2014]
- NSA reveals some cyber security flaws are left secret - April 30th, 2014 [April 30th, 2014]
- NSA data center uses less water than expected - April 30th, 2014 [April 30th, 2014]
- April 2014 Breaking News Do you use Google or Yahoo? NSA Intercepts Google And Yahoo Traffic - Video - April 30th, 2014 [April 30th, 2014]
- Supreme Court could weigh in on NSA case, justice says - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- New NSA chief: Agency has lost trust - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- NSA on Heartbleed: 'We're not legally allowed to lie to you' - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- What's The NSA Doing Now? Training More Cyberwarriors - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Anonymous NSA - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Cutting off H2O to the NSA - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Brazil: Greenwald slams US media, shares tips to avoid NSA - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- NSA IS TRYINGG 2 KILL ME FAMS - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- What was more popular on Twitter, NSA, NRA or NBA..today? - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- CIS111: NSA Uncovered - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Views from the Street on NSA Activities and Liberty (6/6) - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Views from the Street on NSA Activities and Liberty (4/6) - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Views from the Street on NSA Activities and Liberty (3/6) - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Views from the Street on NSA Activities and Liberty (2/6) - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Views from the Street on NSA Activities and Liberty (1/6) - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Germany: NSA may have accidentally outed secret base - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- ZyXEL NSA 325 v2 Installations-Wizard - Deutsch / German notebooksbilliger.de - Video - May 1st, 2014 [May 1st, 2014]
- Tech firms to increase alerts about police requests for data -- report - May 2nd, 2014 [May 2nd, 2014]
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits US, after the NSA eavesdropping scandal - Video - May 2nd, 2014 [May 2nd, 2014]
- NSA spies on more US citizens than Russians Snowden - May 3rd, 2014 [May 3rd, 2014]
- THE NEXT NSA?Police under scrutiny for using spying technology - May 3rd, 2014 [May 3rd, 2014]
- Ukraine and NSA will test Merkel - Video - May 3rd, 2014 [May 3rd, 2014]
- The Latest Attacks On NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden - Kevin Gosztola Discusses - Video - May 3rd, 2014 [May 3rd, 2014]
- Still Report #246 - NSA Classifies MH370 Material - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- Code Talker Induction into NSA Hall of Honor - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- NSA ( National Security Agency ) refusal to release documents on UFO's - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- Obama & NSA Refuse FOIA Request on Malaysia Flight deemed classified - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- Kafkawinstons World`s Channel Terminated NSA is replacing Channel`s with Sockpuppet Channel`s - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- NSA Volunteer Justin Hall at the NSA Comedy Tour February 2014 - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- Barack Obama on NSA Surveillance I'd Be Concerned Too If I Wasn't in Government - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- GBPPR Vision #26: Overview of the NSA's TAWDRYYARD Radar Retro-Reflector - Video - May 4th, 2014 [May 4th, 2014]
- NSA proof phone Case - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- 2014 NSA 2014 Million Dollar Publisher's Lab - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- Gen. Michael Hayden - the Former Director of NSA and the CIA - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- REVEALED: Here's The Solution To That Encoded NSA Puzzle Tweet - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- Michael Hayden's Unwitting Case Against Secret Surveillance - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- NSA's Encrypted Tweet: We're Hiring Code Breakers - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- Russ Tice: Life as a NSA Whistleblower - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- What Is Going on at NSA These Days - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- What is the Role of the NSA? AFF Dallas Debates - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- Edward Snowden said CIA , and NSA had 52. 6 Billion for black budget - Video - May 5th, 2014 [May 5th, 2014]
- NSA looks to appeal to young cryptographers through coded ads - May 6th, 2014 [May 6th, 2014]
- Code Cracked: Mysterious NSA Tweet Is Decrypted in Seconds - May 6th, 2014 [May 6th, 2014]