Snowden leaks have permanently damaged the NSA
By Jack Israel
12:41 p.m. EST, March 3, 2014
On Sept. 12, 2001 senior managers and technical experts crammed into the narrow and stuffy conference room of the National Security Agency's Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) director ... to make sense of what had just happened the previous morning ...
Much of the conversation the morning after focused on phone calls, a technology that NSA was long familiar with. But about 15 minutes in, someone opined, what about the Internet? This was a relatively new technology, one that some in NSA feared would cause the agency to "go blind" because of the dazzling volumes of information and endless variety of new and emerging communications modes such as chat, email, and even telephone calls over the Internet. There was a collective sigh as each manager slumped in their chair. The Internet was a brave new world for NSA, and it was leaving the agency behind in its dust.
"How do we know they're even using it?" the head of the data collection directorate asked. Several years ago we had sampled communications channels looking for al-Qaida and had not found a trace.
"They are," a senior analyst responded. "They're saying so in their phone calls" ...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-nsa-israel-20140303,0,1683316.story
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