[Vision2020] Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 3, 2013
Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles By ERIC
LICHTBLAU<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lichtblau/index.html>and
MICHAEL
S. SCHMIDT<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/michael_s_schmidt/index.html>

WASHINGTON — The National Security
Agency<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>’s
dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions
and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use
its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say.

Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering,
counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts
to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down
because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority,
current and former government officials say.

Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the
security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they
could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.

The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor Edward
J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance
operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk of
reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community has
been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated officials
outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used widely enough.

“It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A.,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a
former senior intelligence official at the White House and at the office of
the director of national intelligence. “They collect all this information,
but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to what they want.”

“The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar,
who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to
become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. —
incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if
they were just able to pry it out of them.”

Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Secret Service, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland
Security<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/homeland_security_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org>have
sometimes been given access to the security agency’s surveillance
tools for particular cases, intelligence officials say.

But more often, their requests have been rejected because the links to
terrorism or foreign intelligence, usually required by law or policy, are
considered tenuous. Officials at some agencies see another motive —
protecting the security agency’s turf — and have grown resentful over what
they see as a second-tier status that has undermined their own
investigations into security matters.

At the drug agency, for example, officials complained that they were
blocked from using the security agency’s surveillance tools for several
drug-trafficking cases in Latin America, which they said might be connected
to financing terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere.

At the Homeland Security Department, officials have repeatedly sought to
use the security agency’s Internet and telephone databases and other
resources to trace cyberattacks on American targets that are believed to
have stemmed from China, Russia and Eastern Europe, according to officials.
They have often been rebuffed.

Officials at the other agencies, speaking only on the condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the tensions, say the
National Security Agency’s reluctance to allow access to data has been
particularly frustrating because of post-Sept. 11 measures that were
intended to encourage information-sharing among federal agencies.

In fact, a change made in 2008 in the executive order governing
intelligence was intended to make it easier for the security agency to
share surveillance information with other agencies if it was considered
“relevant” to their own investigations. It has often been left to the
national intelligence director’s office to referee the frequent disputes
over how and when the security agency’s spy tools can be used. The
director’s office declined to comment for this article.

Typically, the agencies request that the N.S.A. target individuals or
groups for surveillance, search its databases for information about them,
or share raw intelligence, rather than edited summaries, with them. If
those under scrutiny are Americans, approval from the secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court is required.

The security agency, whose mission is to spy overseas, and the
F.B.I.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
its main partner in surveillance operations, dominate the process as the
Justice Department’s main “customers” in seeking warrants from the
intelligence court, with nearly 1,800 approved by the court last year.

In a statement, the security agency said that it “works closely with all
intelligence community partners, and embeds liaison officers and other
personnel at those agencies for the express purpose of ensuring N.S.A. is
meeting their requirements and providing support to their missions.”

The security agency’s spy tools are attractive to other agencies for many
reasons. Unlike traditional, narrowly tailored search warrants, those
granted by the intelligence court often allow searches through records and
data that are vast in scope. The standard of evidence needed to acquire
them may be lower than in other courts, and the government may not be
required to disclose for years, if ever, that someone was the focus of
secret surveillance operations.

Decisions on using the security agency’s powers rest on many complicated
variables, including a link to terrorism or “foreign intelligence,” the
type of surveillance or data collection that is being conducted, the
involvement of American targets, and the priority of the issue.

“Every agency wants to think that their mission has to be the highest
priority,” said a former senior White House intelligence official involved
in recent turf issues.

Other intelligence shops usually have quick access to N.S.A. tools and data
on pressing matters of national security, like investigating a terrorism
threat, planning battlefield operations or providing security for a
presidential trip, officials say. But the conflicts arise during
longer-term investigations with unclear foreign connections.

In pressing for greater access, a number of smaller agencies maintain that
their cases involve legitimate national security threats and could be
helped significantly by the N.S.A.’s ability to trace e-mails and Internet
activity or other tools.

Drug agency officials, for instance, have sought a higher place for global
drug trafficking on the intelligence community’s classified list of
surveillance priorities, according to two officials.

Dawn Dearden, a drug agency spokeswoman, said it was comfortable allowing
the N.S.A. and the F.B.I. to take the lead in seeking surveillance
warrants. “We don’t have the authority, and we don’t want it, and that
comes from the top down,” she said.

But privately, intelligence officials at the drug agency and elsewhere have
complained that they feel shut out of the process by the N.S.A. and the
F.B.I. from start to finish, with little input on what groups are targeted
with surveillance and only sporadic access to the classified material that
is ultimately collected.

Sometimes, security agency and bureau officials accuse the smaller agencies
of exaggerating links to national security threats in their own cases when
pushing for access to the security agency’s surveillance capabilities.
Officials from the other agencies say that if a link to national security
is considered legitimate, the F.B.I. will at times simply take over the
case itself and work it with the N.S.A.

In one such case, the bureau took control of a Secret Service investigation
after a hacker was linked to a foreign government, one law enforcement
official said. Similarly, the bureau became more interested in
investigating smuggled cigarettes as a means of financing terrorist groups
after the case was developed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives.

Mr. Edgar said officials in the national intelligence director’s office
occasionally allow other agencies a role in identifying surveillance
targets and seeing the results when it is relevant to their own inquiries.
But more often, he acknowledged, the office has come down on the side of
keeping the process held to an “exclusive club” at the N.S.A., the F.B.I.
and the Justice Department, with help from the Central Intelligence Agency
on foreign issues.

Officials in the national intelligence director’s office worry about
opening the surveillance too widely beyond the security agency and the
F.B.I. for fear of abuse, Mr. Edgar said. The two intelligence giants have
been “burned” by past wiretapping controversies and know the political
consequences if they venture too far afield, he added.

“I would have been very uncomfortable if we had let these other agencies
get access to the raw N.S.A. data,” he said.

As furious as the public criticism of the security agency’s programs has
been in the two months since Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, “it could have been
much, much worse, if we had let these other agencies loose and we had real
abuses,” Mr. Edgar said. “That was the nightmare scenario we were worried
about, and that hasn’t happened.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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