Comments on: Thoughts on the NSA revelations

By: Government Watch » Blog Archive » Secret Program to Combat terrorist financing

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:45:22 +0000

[...] Iâ€™ve been critical of the NSA program that was revealed by the same New York Times reporters in December. But I think this program is very different, and plays a valid and important role in the war on terrorism, for three reasons: [...]

By: Homeland Security Watch » NYT reveals secret program to combat terrorist financing

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 04:26:44 +0000

[...] I’ve been critical of the NSA program that was revealed by the same New York Times reporters in December. But I think this program is very different, and plays a valid and important role in the war on terrorism, for three reasons: [...]

By: Homeland Security Watch » Blog Archive » The NSA goes to Silicon Valley

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 04:22:50 +0000

[...] Most of the blog reaction to this story has been critical, wondering why tech companies would get involved with the NSA. I’ve expressed concerns in the last two months about the apparent circumvention of U.S. law in the recent NSA revelations, but this seems like exactly what the NSA should be doing: seeking out new ideas from the nation’s brightest technology minds. The NSA absolutely needs to stay ahead of the technology curve and adopt leading-edge tools. That’s not inconsistent with wanting there to be a better framework to ensure that the applications of these technologies are legal and are used consistent with the nation’s system of checks and balances. [...]

By: Homeland Security Watch » Blog Archive » NSA revelations: the Bureau strikes back

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 06:28:18 +0000

[...] The article notes how NSA was forced to disguise the source of its leads to such an extent that it hindered the FBI’s ability to discern how it should respond to leads. This is another data point in support of the key argument in my initial response to the NSA story: that fighting the war on terror by taking ’short cuts’ or operating in a legal grey zone is ultimately the less effective strategy for combating the threats that we face. There’s something inherently wrong with a system where you can’t even trust the nation’s lead law enforcement agency with any context on collected intelligence. [...]

By: Homeland Security Watch » Blog Archive » Non-story of the day: CBP opens international mail

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 18:33:35 +0000

[...] There are certainly cases where the government has overreached on privacy and civil liberties issues, as I’ve written about on this site, and I think the media is doing a commendable job of bringing issues such as the recent disclosures about the NSA to public attention. But the media needs to do a better job of discerning between real “Big Brother” concerns and red herrings such as this story, rather than crying wolf in response to any scrap of evidence that supports a theory of malicious government overreach. [...]

By: Homeland Security Watch » Blog Archive » More NSA revelations from the New York Times

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 08:54:51 +0000

[...] But this story reinforces what I wrote last Monday in this post, and my sense that the extra-legal path that has been chosen by the Administration will harm our efforts to fight the war on terror in the long-run, for all of the potential short-run benefits. A story like this has the potential to tar ALL data mining and data analysis activities in the government, without making distinctions between activities based upon their security benefits, built-in privacy protections, and consistency with other legal and societal norms. [...]