Re: Who on funsec is in the "Main Core" database?

[Wes Deviers <wdevie () hrcsb org>]

On Wed 21 May  2008 4:18:10 pm Paul Ferguson wrote:
> -- "John C. A. Bambenek,GCIH,CISSP" <bambenek.infosec () gmail com> wrote:
> > I didn't say TSA policies were efficacious to begin with.
>
> I think you mean "effective." :-)
>
> > But that's hardly a fair analogy when comparing it to say, tracking who is
> > calling Al Qaeda.
>
> And how do you determine that? Does al Qaeda have a phone number?
>
> That's a strawman argument, that is in effect, ridiculous on its face.
>
> - ferg

That's not a strawman argument.  Of course AQ operatives have phone numbers.  
The difficulty is in correlating the millions of phone calls every day (to 
speak nothing of IP traffic) to interesting operatives instead of everybody 
else.  I think it's fairly absurd to assume that our intelligence agencies 
are incapable of figuring out a set of suspect phone numbers to monitor.  

The problem, and the entire political debacle behind "illegal wiretapping", 
was what happens when one, or both, of the known/suspected operatives with 
known phone numbers are inside the US?  What if you have to get the warrent 
issued by a moron who watches Law & Order or Boston Legal and assumes that, 
like on TV, every possible use of government wiretapping is blatant racism?  
It makes a lot of sense, at that point, to have a way to bypass the local 
jurisdiction BS and politics and just do the dang wiretap.  

Now, do I support the program?  Not necessarily.  It's easy to defeat...but 
claiming that it's ineffective because AQ doesn't have a phone number is 
intellectually dishonest.

Wes


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