Former NSA Director: ‘An attack is going to come’ In the interview with General Keith Alexander, they review soundbites regarding “ThinThread” which was discontinued after the wake of 9-11.  ThinThread was the NSA’s in-line encryption of surveiled domestic phone calls to discount non-international metadata and phonem algorithms. General Alexander explains in the interview how there is a workflow with checks and balances to ensure domestic spying has legitimate ties to terrorist links.  1978’s enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) lays out procedures which the government must follow for electronic surveillance and physical searches of those whom may be engaged in espionage or international terrorism.  Dedicating resources to covert channels has always been a balancing act between operating within the confines of authorized action versus collection of intelligence which greatly contributes to social network analysis. The “Snowden Revelations” have been a hot topic for the media but are nothing new.  It is a simple reminder of the American public’s selective amnesia. These same intelligence activities were big news 8 years ago in May of 2006 when former President Bush nominated General Michael Hayden to direct CIA after General Hayden had headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005.  At that time, Senators on the Hill began demanding service providers like AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth come forward to explain their knowledge of secret collection for the billions of records in a national call database. The unique fact about FISA is that it does not prohibit the NSA from the mining and analysis of data so long as personally identifiable information like names, SSNs, or addresses are excluded. General Alexander defended recent revelations by Snowden and NSA analysts by saying “There are a series of programs; each of those help us build the picture. And if you start taking some of those off the table, the question is, when does it become too difficult for the analysts to conclude what happened? That’s how 9/11 occurred.” General Curtis LeMay once said “Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.” Perhaps those concerned with domestic privacy should consider the limitations of FISA. [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="1936488140"]]]>