This would be the Weather Report for this week. It slides over tomorrow’s celebration of foolishness and the real transition from one sort of weather to another. Lions and lambs will frolic in April, and we will get warmer. That is an immutable change with which we are all familiar.
There is a lot going on in the background of our government, though not much of it is visible at the front end. The COVID crisis has been wrapped around the Climate Crisis and into the Electoral Crisis Demanding Fundamental Change in a fashion that seems intended to keep America in a perpetual state of emergency. In that situation, unusual things are declared to be necessary, and can’t be discussed because they must be speedily implemented due to…emergency.
We have had emergencies before, and swift and effective response has made some of them go away. The same sorts of speedy response has made others worse. Since everything is political these days- maybe a demonstration of a political crisis- I will just let that one lie there undisturbed. My son wrote this morning about the passing of a fellow who helped entwine himself in a previous crisis. That would be Mr. G. Gordon Liddy, the famous radio personality. He was 90 when he left, though he gave four years to confinement for a string of crimes in support of President Richard Nixon.
He also gained a sort of fame that most of us in the business would prefer to avoid. But that brings us around to the nature of living in the perpetual emergency. In our line of work, the term “Sources and Methods” is frequently used to justify keeping things secret. It is something most professionals regard seriously. If a source of information is disclosed, its utility is compromised. If the method by which that source is exploited is disclosed, then it can be ended, or inverted to provide false information. Both are fragile things. Delicacy does not permit me to go further on that road, but it is the essence of many conversations with the legendary Admiral Mac Showers.
The Sources and Methods used in his war with the Japanese was about deciphering the operational codes used in military communications. The secret was considered so important that it was kept for nearly thirty years after the war in which it was used was concluded. It’s secrecy became important for other reasons along the way. Follow on targets. Careers. Politics. That is the nature of secrets.
Here is an example. Imagine your intelligence apparatus discovered a means to exploit a weakness in an opponent’s technology. In the old days, that might be a means of eavesdropping on a target. Then there are questions of authority and method. Is the target foreign, and not directly protected by US law?
There are a series of rules and regulations in place to ensure the process follows the rules of law and the rules of secrecy. There are many, and the collection would be guided by oversight of the legal process under which it was done. For example, if you had a means of collecting information from discussions in a speeding auto, it might be unique and valuable. But having acquired the information, it is possible that other factors would be involved.
Suppose a target talked about one thing, and in the same stream of conversation decided to play golf at a facility owned by an American citizen with no involvement in the targeted activity? And information about that innocent party became part of the collection conducted under rules applying to foreigners?
That information would be covered by law and court action. That is part of what Mac and many others helped put in place due to Congressional interest in the activities of people like Mr. Liddy. Those did not follow the law as it existed, and the establishment of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court was intended to ensure that it did not happen again.
There has been recent discussion of those sorts of issues again, but with an interesting twist. It is not just the secretive National Security Agency or CIA that provides information. Their data is based on unique sources and methods, overseen by Congress and under the approval of the FISA Court when necessary. Technology has advanced since the rules were established.
Now, it is not just Google, but the handful of companies we interact with daily. The digital space is wide open for all sorts of collection. You know how that works. So much information flying around and collected by customers who ostensibly have no relation to the national security structure established to penetrate the old Soviet Union. “Alexa! Turn down the thermostat!” is a perfectly innocent command. She is always there, mounted on our wall, listening passively and awaiting command. From whom that would come is more of an open technical question.
What the companies have is the information to target citizens with specialty advertising, based on browsing habits and digital inquiries. Locational information from your phone is useful to enable targeting to specific geolocations of vendor interest. Nothing that would require legal authority to collect, and available in packaged products for commercial prices.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, created as an analytic organization, was recently accused of purchasing that sort of data to incorporate into their information streams. It is just a source and a method, perfectly legal. How one might use that information is something else entirely.
It is a fun new world, governed by emergency rules and managed by commercial interests. Given the new emphasis on the domestic threat we have been told about in one or more of the current emergencies, it is only to be expected, right?
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com