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16 June 2014 The Next NSA Dragnet
Paul Dietrich (twitter: @paulmd199) What are the consequences of moving storage of the bulk telephony collection (BR-FISA) out of the hands of the NSA, and into the hands of the telcos? What would the access model look like? I think it would look something like PRISM-for-telcos, where the FBI is given direct access to both content and metadata, and the NSA and CIA get access via the FBI. By requiring telcos to hold data for a certain period, and getting a PRISM-like access to it, the NSA gets to say they "don't have direct access to the data." As they do with the PRISM partners, overlooking that the FBI has direct access, and the arrangements the NSA has with the FBI amount to virtually the same thing. It would be structured different from MYSTIC, where the NSA basically slurps all information into its own repositories. But functionally: the NSA and CIA get access to the content of all of the calls made within the United States, but only has to store what's actually being tasked. My thought is that this would supplement, and eventually replace domestic upstream collection (Blarney, Fairview, etc), as each new telco is bribed and/or bullied into compliance with the new regime. Or perhaps, hopefully civil liberties will score a much-needed victory, and halt such encroachments. This time around, it looks like the telcos are resisting, which is a good sign. The public debate around the issue makes it hard for me to predict the details, but I think that the overall goal is something along the above lines. In effect, the US government acquires a telephony content dragnet while claiming it is eliminating the metadata dragnet. I see this as a likely scenario, but not an inevitability.
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