[governance] Now that's reassuring: Statement from James Clapper (Director of USA National Intelligence)

[John Curran]

On Jun 7, 2013, at 10:33 AM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> James Clapper  (Director of USA National Intelligence) said in a statement,
> per USA Today--the program (PRISM) has clear "limits": "It cannot be used to
> intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located
> within the United States."

Imagine a very, very large collection of data from a variety of sources,
including things that have multiple parties involved (e.g. phone calls).

There is no way to allow someone to access "all records with Mr. High Risk
in them" without also getting records returned that contain references to 
those who may be US citizens, or located in the US.  If Mr. High Risk and 
myself chatted on the phone, then the record shows up, despite my being a 
US citizen.  You presumably design the system such that it is very hard to 
query directly (i.e. "target") US citizens, but there will be lots of data 
returned which incidentally is all about US citizens, unless all references 
are redacted at the source (which would render the system useless for much 
of its intended terrorism risk mitigation purposes.)

Even you believe that government can operate with very high integrity in
the presence of such capabilities, the "incidental" spying ability of such 
a system when working perfectly is still rather daunting, and presume some 
acceptance of some very serious tradeoffs between terrorism threat detection 
and personal freedoms.  I fully understand the value in proactive measures
protecting innocent parties from harm, but am having some difficulty with
imagining a system of "checks and balances" that actually would function
successfully, in light of the extreme potential for abuse.

/John

Disclaimers: My views alone (well, I guess they're also shared with some
             unknown parties whether I like it or not... ;-)




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