A point about the NSA spying - talking in code..

[johnnydrama]

Right wingers and the administration like to say that the leaking of this (illegal) program helps
our enemies know that we are spying on them.

I might ask them...

On right before 9/11, there were transmissions intercepted, but weren't translated until 9/12.

Overheard was

"The match is about to begin"
"Tomorrow is zero hour"

So, doesn't it seem pretty obvious that terorrists know they are being listened in to, since they
are talking in code.

[jody]

1. Yes, but such phrases are incomprehensible to NSA.

:sarcasm: :rofl:

[megatherium]

2. Probably so, but the NSA has a certain thoroughness.

Back in the cold war, the NSA intercepted lots of Soviet transmissions. The Soviets were using a robust code for these transmissions but it had the property that if a Soviet operator made a mistake like accidently using the same key twice in a row, those messages could be cracked. It turns out about 1% of the transmissions were able to be decoded.

Now they are probably using the most advanced speech recognition and data mining (informatics) techniques to find interesting conversations for human analysts to listen to.

[jody]

3. Yes but the sheer volume of wireless traffic limits such techniques unless

NSA has an effective/efficient first order filter to avoid an exhaustive search among all communications.

[megatherium]

8. The largest employer of PhD mathematicians in the country will

think of some good algorithms for this, I expect.

[tulsakatz]

4. the terrorists have known for years.........

.....that their cell phones were being tapped and their emails are being read by govt types!!
Which is why they sometimes send messages the old fashioned way..........delivered by hand.

This is just another excuse by the ever deceitful Bush administration!!

[johnnydrama]

5. right

The point is, the terrorists know they're being listened in to. This is proof. So any notion that
this had to be secret or the terrorists would find out we're listening to them is baloney.

[EFerrari]

7. Triple decker baloney sandwich. You are spot on. n/t

[Senator Obama]

6. Clear text transmission overheard on the air....

"There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq".


Of course not knowning that this message is clear text, the NSA would decrypt it to: "Invade ASAP. Minimal ground forces. They will greet us with flowers. Make sure you secure the oilfields." This explains a lot about the conduct of this administration..NOT...LOL.

Obama