Is the NSA Listening in to your Telephone Calls?

Everyone who I know in Mexico (MEXGOV officials and narcos) believes that their telephone calls are being listened to by MEXGOV, the cartels or both. I don't think that they are paranoid. They also feel that USGOV is listening in and I can't say that is necessarily off the mark.

But this blog post is about the US, not MEXGOV because having MEXGOV "illegally" wiretap is like dog bites man. It's not a story. The US is a bit more interesting because there are laws to protect unwarranted wiretaps on US Citizens. Everyone knows that the National Security Agency, headquartered at Ft. George Meade, Maryland acts like a vacuum cleaner where SIGINT is concerned and that sophisticated methods are used to sift that information that comes from a number of sources including (but not limited to) telephone conversations.

Some of these programs are discussed in a new book, "Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry", by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady. The book will be released on April 1, however having had access to it before its release, I can share what it says and you can decide whether or not to pay any attention to it. (how's that for a dodge and weave?) The authors also wrote "The Command: Deep Inside the President's Secret Army", which I have not read. It's available on Kindle for US$2.99.

The program that they cite is caveated RAGTIME (RT) and I suspect that if you nosed around you'd find documents classified TS/NF/WN/RT.

RAGTIME is subdivided into four categories. RAGTIME A are intercepts of foreign-to-foreign data. RAGTIME B is foreign intercepts made as it transits through US territory. RAGTIME C deals with intercepts of nuclear proliferation material and RAGTIME P are Patriot Act related intercepts.

Though I don't wish to over complicate the process with Cryptonyms. The National Security Agency specializes in 'data mining'. They sift through a large amount of bulk data that comes through the scoops that they've put into place. ANCHORY, the all-source database holds everything that comes in. HOMEBASE coordinates the data base with collection requirements set by the various components of the Intelligence Community, which task NSA.

Using link analysis as a basis for deciding what is and what is not important, the links between the known and heretofore unknown are given a score to both target validity and information in the context of probable reliability. Xkeyscore, once applied, directs the raw data to different 'selectors'. For example, AIRGAP is a selector associated with the Department of Defense (DOD). TINMAN deals with information that applies to both airborne warning and information that a component of CIA uses. WRANGLER organizes bits of data along a timeline to try and help all of it to make some sense.

The legality of various collection departments (can USGOV collect against a particular source) is a matter for attorneys and politicians to hash out. However, finding legal consensus is not always as easy as it may seem to be. This blog is not going to sort that out for you. Neither does it condemn the NSA or it's outreach to data delivered by T-MEX or the Mexican Intelligence Agencies (Mostly Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, CESEN).

Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (Mexico)

MEXGOV has been working on the concept of an intelligence agency embedded within another intelligence agency. If world history tells us anything, it tells us that this breeds dysfunction. Thus it is with the chains of history heralding a warning, that Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI, has been launched.

There is also a Centro Nacional de Inteligencia in Madrid that supports Spanish national interests. Please don't confuse the two.

President Peña Nieto's government has attempted to craft the new CNI after the USGOV's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), except there is almost no comparison in terms of how it's set up, it's mission or the personnel gathered to administer it.

The US Central Intelligence Agency was formed to collect information on nations outside of the United States and it's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services was an action oriented service. Thus CIA inherited a directorate which has had several names: Clandestine Service, Directorate of Operations, Directorate of Plans, etc. The Mexican version, CNI, won't have that sort of capability because it's linked to Justice-related intelligence collection on people and organizations of interest within Mexico. Based on an American model, it would be sort of an FBI/DEA fusion center (think of a centrally located HIDTA group and you're close).

Interior Minister (Secretaría de Gobernación) Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong would disagree with me but I don't care. That's what it is and a rose by any other name is still a rose. 

The principle mission of the new National Intelligence Center (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia) will be to fight organized crime. The CIA doesn't do that to any significant degree. And what little of it they do, they do poorly because the bureaucracy is big, slow and CNC is poorly funded with many in its dedicated staff "double or triple hatted". That means that there aren't enough people to do it right.

CNI will act as a central collection point for information generated by all other intelligence and justice entities in the country, including the police, military, Attorney General's Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR), and other federal and state agencies -- which is specifically what the CIA doesn't do. As Osorio Chong explained, it will "work towards the necessary bringing together of all information." CNI will be structured within the Interior Ministry (Secretaría de Gobernación, Segob), and will report to the existing Mexican Center for Investigation and National Security (Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, CISEN). Thus, an intelligence agency within an intelligence agency.

CNI's targets will be principally the very smallest of the narcotics trafficking groups: Los Cabelleros Templarios, Los Zetas, what's left of the Beltran Leyva Organization and the Gulf Cartel. They are not presently tasked with targeting the Sinaloa Federation, which incorporates Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Arellano Felix Organization -- and traffics about 80% of the narcotics across the US/Mexico and US/Canada borders. I won't be so indelicate as to ask why it's rolling that way. If you're a cynic, you may have already come to the same conclusion that I have.