http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0605180150may18,1,7360684.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hedNSA tested privacy-friendly system
Late '90s pilot could collect, analyze data but without intrusionWASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project--not because it failed to work--but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden expansion in the agency's surveillance powers that was granted by the White House, according to several intelligence officials.
The agency opted instead to adopt only one component of the program, which produced a far less capable and rigorous program. It remains the backbone of the NSA's warrantless surveillance efforts, tracking domestic and overseas communications from a vast databank of information, and monitoring selected calls.
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The program the NSA rejected, called ThinThread, was developed to handle greater volumes of information, partly in expectation of threats surrounding the millennium celebrations. Sources say it bundled together four cutting-edge surveillance tools. ThinThread would have:
- Used more sophisticated methods of sorting through massive phone and e-mail data to identify suspect communications.
- Identified U.S. phone numbers and other communications data and encrypted them to ensure caller privacy.
- Employed an automated auditing system to monitor how analysts handled the information, in order to prevent misuse and improve efficiency.
- Analyzed the data to identify relationships between callers and chronicle their contacts. Only when evidence of a potential threat had been developed would analysts be able to request decryption of the records.
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