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Total Terror Plots* NSA DATA COLLECTION PROGRAM: THE CHALLENGE OF ASSESING EFFECTIVENESS Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors DEIBEL, CHARLES LOUIS, II Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 10:48:12 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/613829 NSA DATA COLLECTION PROGRAM: THE CHALLENGE OF ASSESING EFFECTIVENESS By CHARLES LOUIS DEIBEL II ____________________ A Thesis Submitted to The Honors College In Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelors degree With Honors in Political Science THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA M A Y 2 0 1 6 Approved by: ____________________________ Dr. John Tidd School of Government and Public Policy Abstract The National Security Agency (NSA) has played a key role in the United States Government’s counterterror program since September 11. Over the last 15 years, the NSA has faced considerable controversy regarding its counterterrorism data collection program and the legal authority behind it. This paper, however, is concerned with whether or not that program has been effective in preventing Islamist related or inspired terror attacks inside the United States. As NSA capabilities and authorities have expanded since 9/11, has it been effective in helping to prevent attacks in the U.S.? Definitively answering this question is extremely difficult, given significant challenges regarding the amount and quality of public information concerning NSA’s involvement in prevented terror attacks. Yet, this does not mean that some preliminary conclusions cannot be made regarding NSA’s involvement in counterterror cases. A review of two separate data-sets that catalog Islamist inspired or related terror plots, has permitted certain inferences regarding NSA’s involvement in particular cases. This effort has nonetheless highlighted the difficulties faced by public researchers in studying a clandestine agency’s implementation of policy. Introduction The terrorist attacks of 9/11 significantly changed the landscape of America’s national security policies. Our country became faced with a new, challenging threat that was unlike anything we had faced in our past. In the weeks following 9/11, in an effort to combat this new threat, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to initiate the classified “President’s Surveillance Program” (PSP).1 The main goal of this 1 Unclassified Report on the President’s Surveillance Program, 1 program was to help the federal government prevent terrorist attacks by radical, extremist groups against the U.S. homeland. The intention of the PSP was for the NSA to intercept different forms of electronic communication between known and suspected terrorist groups and individuals in the United States.2 Shortly following the inception of the PSP, Congress passed H.R. 3162, the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act,” a.k.a. “The USA PATRIOT Act”3. This new law, mostly an amendment to the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” (FISA) of 1978, expanded the government’s search and seizure authority and eliminated many legal and bureaucratic impediments to the sharing of information.4 In essence, it attempted to give the law enforcement and intelligence communities more robust tools in order to combat terrorism.5 With these new laws and authorizations, the NSA started carrying out what would be at times a highly controversial data collection program*. While much discussion has focused on whether this program, and the NSA’s implementation of it, are right or wrong, much less effort has focused on whether it has been an effective policy. This paper will focus on the effectiveness of the NSA’s data collection program with respect to preventing Islamist related or inspired terrorist attacks in the United States. Highlighting this issue is vital to the debate over whether the federal government has made the right decisions in regards to how the program might affect such 2 Ibid. 3 Robert P. Abele, A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act (Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 2005), 23. 4 Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermuele, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7-8. 5 Howard Ball, The USA PATRIOT Act (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 50. * While NSA collects a wide variety of information, the term “data collection program” will refer to its post-September 11 efforts to acquire intelligence regarding foreign terrorist operations. 2 related issues as privacy and civil liberties. If the effectiveness of the policy can be empirically measured, it can help inform both elected officials and the public as to the actual impact of this policy. Measuring the effectiveness of a given national security policy can not only shed light on the policy in question, but can also add substance to the debate over balancing civil liberties against security. More broadly, an attempt to measure effectiveness of the program will help to illustrate what we can know, and not know, about certain classified programs and policies. An honest, transparent debate between the public and the government about policy is a hallmark of the democratic system in the U.S., and studying national security policy academically can help remove partisan biases from the equation. An honest search for the facts is truly important in informing the public and policy makers, but given the clandestine nature of our country’s intelligence community and some federal law enforcement activities, finding vital information to answering certain questions becomes extremely difficult. It is not as if the information does not exist; most of it is just not available to the public. Even with this information gap, however, one can still paint a general picture to infer the effectiveness of certain national security policies. Much of the current controversy regarding the NSA’s data collection program, and the USA PATRIOT Act generally, revolves around the debate over whether these laws and policies to hinder terrorist’s ability to execute terrorist attacks in the United States have come at the cost civil liberties.6 This debate is crucial and its importance cannot be understated. Much of the literature regarding the NSA programs and the USA PATRIOT Act focuses on this, but this paper is concerned with the following question: 6 C. William Michaels, No Greater Threat: America After September 11 and the Rise of a National Security State (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002), 48-50. 3 has the NSA been effective in executing its goal of directly preventing, or assisting in the prevention of, terrorist attacks in the U.S. through its data collection program and thus, helped save American lives and property? There are many different criteria that can be used when attempting to evaluate a specific policy. Measuring the effectiveness of the NSA’s data collection program could be done in a couple ways. Michael Kraft and Scott Furlong highlight four criteria that are of critical consideration: effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and political feasibility.7 An economic cost-benefit analysis could be done to show if the benefits of the program outweigh the costs. But the focus of this paper is not on the monetary or physical costs of the program. While the budgetary costs are an important consideration in regards to a specific policy, that discussion does not pertain to whether that policy has achieved its intended goals. Likewise, it is extremely difficult to measure empirically the benefits of a prevented terrorist attack. One cannot easily measure the number of lives, or the amount of property, saved from a prevented terrorist attack, though the government has made calculations as to the value of a life.8 That is why this paper will not attempt a cost- benefit analysis, but will assess effectiveness as measured by the number of terrorist attacks prevented primarily by the NSA’s data collection, or terrorist attacks prevented where the NSA assisted in the investigation. Even this measurement is not fully comprehensive, as will be discussed in detail later. The NSA does not work in a vacuum, and it is usually not a lead investigator in terrorism cases. That means that law enforcement and intelligence agencies, like the FBI 7 Michael E. Kraft and Scott R. Furlong, Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, (Washington D.C., CQ Press, 2007), 26. 8 Ibid, 162. 4 and CIA, rely on the NSA in helping them with ongoing investigations. While research for this cannot say with certainty whether or not the NSA’s data collection program is effective due to some significant challenges and issues, there is enough information available to draw at least some preliminary conclusions. Controversy and legality aside, this paper will explore the hypothesis that NSA’s data collection program has been effective in helping to prevent terrorist attacks since 9/11. Variables When attempting to assess a government policy or program it is essential to clearly describe the policy and its impact on the public problem it is seeking to address. For the purpose of this paper, the policy (the independent variable) will be the expanding robustness of NSA’s data collection program, from shortly after 9/11 to the present day. The impact (the dependent variable) will be the growth in the NSA’s program’s effectiveness in helping to prevent Islamist related or inspired terrorist attacks inside the United States. With respect to the independent variable, the NSA’s data collection program is not unique in the U.S. government. While the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA Programs have received the most attention and criticism in regards to federal surveillance following 9/11, they are by no means the “be all, end all” of federal data collection and analysis.
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