When the news hit that the NSA had a domestic spying program, I was shocked, but not entirely. With the passage of the USA - Patriot act, a new world is revealed: warrants that keep cops and the FBI out are no longer needed, habeas corpus is in danger of becoming extinct and those who push - the ones that march on the streets for immigration reform, against the war in Iraq, against American empire - are in danger of government-sponsored voyeurism.
But in this article by Floyd Rudmin, there is statistical evidence that shows the NSA is not really thinking things through. If they did, they would realize that domestic spying would never work, and people would have to be falsely identified, falsely interrogated in their homes after the authorities rush in without warrants, and falsely accused.
Here’s an excerpt:
The US Census shows that there are about 300 million people living in the USA…Suppose that there are 1,000 terrorists there as well, which is probably a high estimate. The base-rate would be 1 terrorist per 300,000 people. In percentages, that is .00033%, which is way less than 1%. Suppose that NSA surveillance has an accuracy rate of .40, which means that 40% of real terrorists in the USA will be identified by NSA’s monitoring of everyone’s email and phone calls. This is probably a high estimate, considering that terrorists are doing their best to avoid detection. There is no evidence thus far that NSA has been so successful at finding terrorists. And suppose NSA’s misidentification rate is .0001, which means that .01% of innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists, at least until they are investigated, detained and interrogated. Note that .01% of the US population is 30,000 people. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA’s system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.0132, which is near zero, very far from one. Ergo, NSA’s surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists.
This administration isn’t particularly astute. They did, after all, start a war for imaginary reasons, on evidence based on trucks moving near large globular buildings. This administration is known for its staging and tricks - when Bush sported his bomber jacket below a Mission Accomplished banner on some aircraft carrier, the news was not a result of pulling out forces from Iraq, but only further retrenching ourselves into the nice little quagmire we are currently in. No, our government is still sending people there, making life difficult for people all over the world.
Back to the NSA - if they know domestic spying isn’t effective, why waste time and money on it? I think it exists because it satisifies some piece of the national security paranoia quota. Those schooled in statistics at the NSA must have known that domestic spying cannot work, but they were obviously pushed aside in favor of projecting the sought-after post 9/11 image of doing something about domestic terrorism.
It just shows how this government is obsessed with its image, making believe that it is doing something when nothing constructive is being done.
It is a superficial regime we live in.
