Ragtime: Code name of NSA's Secret Domestic Intelligence Program Revealed in ****
New Book**** http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/dead_drop/surveillance-state/ragtime-codename-of-nsas-secret-domestic-intelligence-program-revealed-in-new-book.php **** ** ** ** ** ** ** "Deep State" uncovers new details about the agency's secretive and hugely*** * controversial surveillance programs. By Shane Harris**** Comments (97) | Published February 27, 2013**** ** ** More than a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a set of extraordinary* *** and secretive surveillance programs conducted by the National Security**** Agency has been institutionalized, and they have grown. **** ** ** These special programs are conducted under the code name Ragtime, and are*** * divided into several subcomponents, according to the new book Deep State:*** * Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady. (I* *** purchased a copy this morning.) **** ** ** The authors, both journalists who cowrote a previous book about special**** operations in the military, have dug deep into the code names and**** operational nitty gritty of the NSA's secretive and hugely controversial**** surveillance programs, and they've come up with impressive new details. **** ** ** Ragtime, which appears in official reports by the abbreviation RT, consists* *** of four parts. **** ** ** Ragtime-A involves US-based interception of all foreign-to-foreign**** counterterrorism-related data; **** ** ** Ragtime-B deals with data from foreign governments that transits through the **** US; **** ** ** Ragtime-C deals with counterproliferation actvities; **** ** ** and then there's Ragtime-P, which will probably be of greatest interest to** ** those who continue to demand more information from the NSA about what it**** does in the United States. **** ** ** P stands for Patriot Act. Ragtime-P is the remnant of the original**** President's Surveillance Program, the name given to so-called "warrantless** ** wiretapping" activities after 9/11, in which one end of a phone call or an** ** e-mail terminated inside the United States. That collection has since been** ** brought under law, but civil liberties groups, journalists, and legal**** scholars continue to seek more information about what it entailed, who was** ** targeted, and what authorities exist today for domestic**** intelligence-gathering. **** ** ** Deep State has some answers. **** ** ** Only about three dozen NSA officials have access to Ragtime's intercept data **** on domestic counter-terrorism collection. That's a tiny handful of the**** agency's workforce, which has been pegged at about 30,000 people. **** ** ** As many as 50 companies have provided data to this domestic collection**** program, the authors report. **** ** ** If the NSA wants to collect information on a specific target, it needs one** ** additional piece of evidence besides its own "link-analysis" protocols, a*** * computerized analysis that assigns probability scores to each potential**** target. This is essentially a way to use a computer data-mining program to** ** help determine whether someone is a national security threat. But the**** authors find that this isn't sufficient if NSA wants to collect on said**** target. And while the authors found that the Foreign Intelligence**** Surveillance Court rarely rejects Ragtime-P requests, it often asks the NSA* *** to provide more information before approving them. **** ** ** How the surveillance is approved tells us a lot about the breadth of the**** NSA's intelligence gathering. The court and the Attorney General both**** certify a slate of approved targets under Ragtime-P, the authors find. That* *** includes a certain amount of "bulk data"-such as phone call logs and**** records-that can be collected around those targets. An NSA official told the **** authors that Ragtime-P can process as many as 50 different data sets at one* *** time. **** ** ** What happens next looks like a 21st-century data assembly line. At the NSA's **** headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, a program called Xkeyscore processes** ** all intercepted electronic signals before sending them to different**** "production lines" that deal with specific issues. Here, we find another**** array of code names. **** ** ** Pinwale is the main NSA database for recorded signals intercepts, the**** authors report. Within it, there are various keyword compartments, which the **** NSA calls "selectors." **** ** ** Metadata (things like the "To" and "From" field on an e-mail) is stored in a **** database called Marina. It generally stays there for five years. **** ** ** In a database called Maui there is "finished reporting," the transcripts and **** analysis of calls. (Metadata never goes here, the authors found.) **** ** ** As all this is happening, there are dozens of other NSA signals activity**** lines, called SIGADS, processing data. There's Anchory, an all-source**** database for communications intelligence; Homebase, which lets NSA analysts* *** coordinate their searches based on priorities set by the Director of**** National Intelligence; Airgap, which deals with missions that are a priority **** for the Department of Defense; Wrangler, an electronic intelligence line;*** * Tinman, which handles air warning and surveillance; and more. **** ** ** Lest you get confused by this swirl of code names and acronyms, keep this*** * image in mind of the NSA as a data-analysis factory. Based on my own**** reporting, the agency is collecting so much information every day that**** without a regimented, factory-like system, analysts would never have the**** chance to look at it all. Indeed, they don't analyze much of it. Computers** ** handle a chunk, but a lot of information remains stored for future analysis. **** ** ** ** ** So who is monitoring this vast production to ensure that the communications* *** of innocent Americans aren't spied on? Ambinder and Grady report that for*** * the NSA's terrorism-related programs, the agency's general counsel's office* *** regularly reveals "target folders," which contain the identities of those*** * individuals who are under surveillance, "to make sure the program complied** ** with the instruction to surveil those reasonably assumed to have connections **** to al-Qaeda." **** ** ** That the NSA is policing itself may come as small comfort to many critics of **** the Obama administration's intelligence programs. The size of the**** "compliance staff" that monitors this activity is only about four or five*** * people, depending on what's available in the budget at any moment, the**** authors report. They also say that we cannot know whether the program is**** pushing beyond the boundaries of the law. **** ** ** However, outside the closed circle of about three dozen NSA employees who*** * are read in to Ragtime, there more than 1,000 people "outside the NSA are*** * privy to the full details of the program." If NSA is breaking the law, "how* *** much longer can that secret last?" the authors ask.**** ** ** We have a preceding example to test this hypothesis, albeit in a limited**** fashion. In 2004, the senior leadership of the Justice Department and the*** * FBI threatened to resign over what they saw as illegal collection activities **** at the NSA, collection activities that are still going on under Ragtime and* *** under new surveillance law. **** ** ** Back then, James Comey, acting as Attorney General while John Ashcroft was** ** in the hospital, refused to sign a set of certifications provided by the**** Justice Department to Internet, financial, and data companies, the authors** ** report. Why? Comey believed that the justification for providing bulk data** ** to the NSA wasn't sufficient. **** ** ** The administration's tortured logic "drove him bonkers. There was just no*** * way to justify this," the authors report, quoting people who have spoken to* *** Comey, who has never publicly said why he objected. Interestingly, the**** authors find that the parts of the program he was objecting to didn't**** implicate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. **** ** ** This comports with my own reporting in my book, The Watchers. The NSA was*** * making "mirrors" of telecommunications databases, so that analysts could go* *** through the data and mine it for clues. As it has been explained to me, the* *** problem here dealt with how the government viewed its legal authorities to** ** access data stored in computers, and whether analysts could dip back into it **** without specific authorizations. Importantly, this data consisted of that*** * so-called "bulk data." It wasn't recorded phone calls or the text of**** e-mails. That information was governed by FISA--or should have been--because **** it was considered "content" under law, and that requires a warrant to**** obtain. **** ** ** The White House panicked when Comey and Ashcroft refused to sign off,**** Ambinder and Grady report, fearing that the companies on which NSA was**** depending for information would cut the agency off if they didn't get a**** signed order from the Attorney General himself. It took six months for the** ** administration to reshape the program so that it comported with**** "interpretation of the metatdata provisions" that were promulgated by the*** * Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. **** ** ** Had these officials resigned, it's unthinkable that the secrets of NSA's**** intelligence gathering activities would have stayed hidden. A year later, in **** 2005, they were revealed in part by the New York Times. Here, too, Ambinder* *** and Grady have some new insights. It turns out that while the NSA's**** director, General Michael Hayden, was publicly excoriating the newspaper for **** disclosing the classified activities, he was privately glad that they**** withheld what he considered key operational details.**** ** ** ==========================================**** (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this **** message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to* *** these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed **** within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with**** "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. **** The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The**** Copyright Act of 1976. 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