Because the threat is real and growing

LITD readers may notice that I have yet to chime in on the debate over the proper extent of our nation's security apparatus's information-gathering prowess.

I'm aware that the NSA has a vast and detailed body of knowledge about who called whom.  I'm aware that the guy who brought this to our attention, Edward Snowden, is nobody's idea of a patriot upholding the principles that the Founders have handed down to us.  He does, however, raise questions worth asking, principally, what is to be done if this kind of reach falls into unsavory hands?  In a day and age when the nation's tax-collection function is thoroughly politicized, when an agency like the EPA can dictate how people enjoy and use their own property, and when the "president" tells law enforcement agencies that it's okay to selectively enforce immigration laws, it's a fair question to ask.

But consider the other side of the debate.  If we're not making every effort to know every last thing we need to know to keep jihadists from inflicting horrifying catastrophes on us, are we not the biggest fools in human history?

It's for this reason that I found this New Yorker interview by Mattathias Schwartz with General Keith B. Alexander, until March the NSA director, most edifying.

Consider what our intelligence-gatherers face when they try to start piecing together clues in a red-flag situation:

I was trying to think of the best way to illustrate what the intelligence people are trying to do. You know “Wheel of Fortune”? Here’s the deal: I’m going to give you a set of big, long words to put on there. Then I’m going to give you some tools to guess the words. You get to pick a vowel or a consonant—one letter. There’s a hundred letters up there. You’ll say, I don’t have a clue. O.K., so you’ve used your first tool in analysis. What the intelligence analysts are doing is using those tools to build the letters, to help understand what the plot is. This is one of those tools. It’s not the only tool. And, at times, it may not be the best tool. It evolved from 9/11, when we didn’t have a tool that helped us connect the dots between foreign and domestic.

Around 9/11, we intercepted some of [the hijackers’] calls, but we couldn’t see where they came from. So guys like [Khalid al-]Mihdhar, [one of the 9/11 hijackers who was living] in California—we knew he was calling people connected to Al Qaeda in Yemen. But we thought he was in the Middle East. We had no way to connect the dots. If you rewound 9/11, what you would have done is tipped the F.B.I. that a guy who is planning a terrorist attack is in San Diego. You may have found the other three groups that were with him.

The C.I.A. could have simply told the F.B.I. that al-Mindhar was in the country. Which they didn’t do, for whatever reason.

But, you see, not everybody is looking at the same picture. So you’re thinking, We’re solving this puzzle. C.I.A. is over here, solving this puzzle. There are a lot of these puzzles that many of us are trying to work. Thousands at any given time. You might ask: What’s the best way for you to figure out who bad guys are? I’m going to tell you there’s a bad guy. What would you start with? You’d say, Well, I need to know who his network for friends are, because chances are many of them are bad, too.

Metadata is the least intrusive, most efficient way to do it. You don’t want to translate millions and millions of calls; you want to get to the most efficient approach. Then, once you know that’s a terrorist, then you can go and get content. 

The General clearly wishes to stress the scope of the challenge:

We know we didn’t stop 9/11. People were trying, but they didn’t have the tools. This tool, we believed, would help them. Let’s look at what’s happening right now. You ought to get this from the START Program at the University of Maryland. They have the statistics on terrorist attacks. 2012 and 2013. The number of terrorist attacks in 2012—do you know how many there were globally?
How many?Six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one. Over ten thousand people killed. In 2013, it would grow to over ten thousand terrorist attacks and over twenty thousand people killed. Now, how did we do in the United States and Europe? How do you feel here? Safe, right? I feel pretty safe.
But the P.C.L.O.B. said that there weren’t any more plots [that were disrupted by the N.S.A. programs]. I don’t know if these are things that couldn’t be shared.They should have had access to those.
I imagined they would have.Sometimes, people don’t ask all the right questions.… Going back to “Wheel of Fortune,” 702 is like getting the free vowels. It helps you get all the key things that you need. It’s the base program. And, then, all the rest of your things are one-offs. Like the [telephone-metadata program]. It’s going to give you a piece, but it’s probably not going to be the key piece. It’s a starting point.

Now, really take in his reasoning for not wanting to give up Section 215 of the Patriot Act.  Be forewarned; it will chill you:

How do you do enough against terrorists without telling them how you’re doing this? This is the issue that I have with leaking classified material, with what Snowden has done. I’ve had forty years of doing this. And some of those were good years.
This must be a very personal thing for you.Yup. So think about how secure our nation has been since 9/11. We take great pride in it. It’s not because of me. It’s because of those people who are working, not just at N.S.A. but in the rest of the intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement, all to keep this country safe. But they have to have tools. With the number of attacks that are coming, the probability, it’s growing—
I’m sorry, could you say that once more?The probability of an attack getting through to the United States, just based on the sheer numbers, from 2012 to 2013, that I gave you—look at the statistics. If you go from just eleven thousand to twenty thousand, what does that tell you? That’s more. That’s fair, right?
I don’t know. I think it depends what the twenty thousand——deaths. People killed. From terrorist attacks. These aren’t my stats. The University of Maryland does it for the State Department.
I’ll look at them. I will. So you’re saying that the probability of an attack is growing.The probability is growing. What I saw at N.S.A. is that there is a lot more coming our way. Just as someone is revealing all the tools and the capabilities we have. What that tells me is we’re at greater risk. I can’t measure it. You can’t say, Well, is that enough to get through? I don’t know. It means that the intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder.

So when people ask me that—including the President—would you give this up? 

His level of certainty confirms what anyone begins to conclude when piecing together developments on the world stage today.  Regarding the proper length of time for keeping metadata, he says this:

We sat down with our analysts. We asked, What are you comfortable with? I said, Now, tell me, because, you know, if something bad happens everybody in the world is going to ask: Why didn’t you tell us?

So we have to explain everything that we can, because I believe the terrorist attacks are coming. You’re going to be in an interview with my successor and say, How could you let this happen? And they’re going to say, Well, you eliminated all the tools to catch the terrorists! You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure that out.

Are there are other things that you can point to when you say that you believe more terrorist attacks are coming?

Look at the way Al Qaeda networks. From Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, and now in Syria, the al-Nusra front. Look at the number of jihadists going into Syria and what they want to do. When put all that together, yeah, you can say those are distant countries, but a lot of these groups are looking to attack the United States. I take that threat very seriously.

His overall point is that, yes, Constitutional safeguards must go hand in hand with advances in our ability to know what our enemies are plotting, but that those advances are essential to maximizing our chances for our civilization's survival.

He has a point, I think.