Last week, I argued that, given the nature of the data collected, and the type of analysis of that data that is possible, the NSA domestic calling database program probably doesn’t help us very much in the fight against terrorism. My only qualification for this analysis was common sense.
So I’m glad to take back everything I said, and put you in the hands of Jonathan David Farley. Farley is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and a science fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Farley has taught in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Vanderbilt University, where he was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2003. In 2001-2002 he was one of four Americans to win an appointment as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar to the United Kingdom. In 2004 he received the Harvard Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University for outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics. The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts declared March 19, 2004, to be Dr. Jonathan David Farley Day.
It may be assumed that when Farley talks about analysis of the NSA data, he knows what the heck he’s talking about. He wrote an Op-ed piece about it in the NYT yesterday. His argument: given the nature of the data collected, and the type of analysis of that data that is possible, the NSA domestic calling database program probably doesn’t help us very much in the fight against terrorism
His argument is difficult to summarize succinctly, but easy enough to follow, so I recommend reading his short piece. I’ll just give you two sound bites, to whet your appetite:
…the National Security Agency’s entire spying program seems to be based on a false assumption: that you can work out who might be a terrorist based on calling patterns. While I agree that anyone calling 1-800-ALQAEDA is probably a terrorist, in less obvious situations guilt by association is not just bad law, it’s bad mathematics, for two reasons.
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That’s what law enforcement should have been doing then and should be doing now: using some common sense and knowledge of terrorists, not playing math games.