“Chatter”

Patrick Radden Keefe is the author of a book called “Chatter,” and he can tell us just who gets spied on and how it’s done.

Good morning, Patrick. Nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us.

PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, AUTHOR, “CHATTER”: Thanks for having me.

S. O’BRIEN: Let’s start with those very questions.

Exactly how is it decided who is going to be spied upon?

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KEEFE: Well, if you think about it, it’s a little bit like sort of a six degrees of separation type way of looking at things. I mean what you have is there are particular people who get calls inside the United States from countries we’re interested in — Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, places where you might have terrorists. And then what you want to do is look at those people, look at all the people they’re calling, look at all the people they’re calling and it sort of radiates out in that manner.

S. O’BRIEN: Here’s what the attorney general said to me in my interview with him yesterday about exactly who’s being targeted.

Let’s listen for a sec.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: We’re talking about communications where one end of the call is outside the United States and where there is a reasonable basis to believe, based upon the experience of a qualified foreign intelligence expert, that a person on the call is either a member of Al Qaeda or a member of an organization that is affiliated with al Qaeda.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O’BRIEN: So then people who we sort of consider to be, you know, innocent civilians who are on the personal phone call, they’re not being spied upon?

KEEFE: Well, you’ve got to think about it. There’s two different things going on here. One of them is when you actually listen in on a phone call and the other is when you see who those people call. Again, it’s this idea that you’re trying to see who are these networks, these terror cells? How do we know where they are?

And so one of the stories that came out last week, actually, was that the NSA was feeding tips, thousands of tips, to the FBI and that the people at the FBI would get these tips and a lot of the time they said it was like, you know, oh boy, we’ve got to go to Pizza Hut again and check out, you know, the people there.

So that in that case, I think it really was innocent civilians who just happened to be in the wrong person’s speed dial.

S. O’BRIEN: Are they listening to code words, you know, where they could say ooh, that code word means bombing or that code word means dirty bomb? Or are they listening to sort of — or looking for connections to people who they know are terrorists?

KEEFE: It’s both. I think it’s much more of the connections. There’s a misconception which is that if you say bomb or jihad on the phone, the computers at the NASA are going to pick it up right away.

But if you think about it, first of all, the NASA is much more sophisticated than that in terms of the way they’re going about this. And, second, the terrorists are more sophisticated, too. I mean they know very well that people are listening and they know better than to use those words on the phone.

S. O’BRIEN: And I would imagine they know better than to use those words in e-mails.

So how are the terrorists getting around that? Because I assume we’re talking about e-mail, too, not just phone communication?

KEEFE: Yes, very much. I mean, and they’ve come up with many, many incredibly sophisticated ways of getting around this. It’s funny, you know, it’s easy to think of them, because we know about the caves in Afghanistan and, you know, what some might argue is the kind of backwards philosophy of the terrorists, as not especially sophisticated.

But, in fact, they have really embraced cutting edge technology. So they do all kinds of things. I mean they use disposable cell phones in order to throw off — throw American authorities off the scent. They use a technology called steganography, where you basically hide a text message inside an image on a Web site. And if somebody else knows which Web site it is, they can extract that text. And it looks, you know, to you or me, it would just look like an image.

S. O’BRIEN: And I guess you could send e-mails without really sending them, I mean just have access — if everybody has access to the same login, you could share an e-mail…

KEEFE: That’s another…

S. O’BRIEN: … without ever really mailing it to somebody.

KEEFE: Exactly. And if you think about it, that way the e-mail is not actually in transit. And if you have somebody, you know, in New York and somebody in Afghanistan and they have the same e-mail address, all you have to do is write out the emotional and save it in the drafts folder and the other person can just log on and check it out.

S. O’BRIEN: Do they have technology to be able to reveal who’s in a suspected terrorist, you know, speed dial? Because I would imagine there’s, you know, to be able to determine that would make a big difference, you know, in sort of proving a relationship, who’s in your speed dial versus who you might just call?

KEEFE: They absolutely do have the technology. But you have to think about it, this is actually an area where, you know, that’s both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because, on the one hand it means you can see who people are calling. On the other hand, in our day to day lives, whether you’re a soccer mom or a terrorist, you make a lot of phone calls. And if all you’re doing is seeing well, who do all of these people call and then who do all of they — those people call, you’re going to end up with a very, very long list, which I think is why you had the FBI sort of pushing back a little bit and saying look, we’re trying to chase down too many of these leads and most of them are going nowhere.

S. O’BRIEN: So, is the NSA essentially being overwhelmed because they’re casting this net so wide and trying to sort of get everybody and then having to sort through those messages? Or do you think, you know, I guess is the NSA winning or are the terrorists sort of winning on the technology front?

KEEFE: Oh, I think it’s a cat and mouse game. I mean I think it’s very difficult to say on any given day. We certainly have heard that this particular program has, in some cases, provided information that has averted disaster. So, for instance, there was the operation on the Brooklyn Bridge, which was supposedly averted because of information gained from this particular wiretapping program.

But having said that, there’s all of those false leads the FBI is chasing down. So it’s difficult to say on any given day.

S. O’BRIEN: Patrick Radden Keefe in a snowy Boston today.

He’s the author of “Chatter.”

Nice to see you.

Thanks for talking with us.

KEEFE: Thanks for having me.

How does our government eavesdrop? Whom do they eavesdrop on? And is the interception of communication an effective means of predicting and preventing future attacks? These are some of the questions at the heart of Patrick Radden Keefe’s brilliant new book, Chatter.
In the late 1990s, when Keefe was a graduate student in England, he heard stories about an eavesdropping network led by the United States that spanned the planet. The system, known as Echelon, allowed America and its allies to intercept the private phone calls and e-mails of civilians and governments around the world. Taking the mystery of Echelon as his point of departure, Keefe explores the nature and context of communications interception, drawing together fascinating strands of history, fresh investigative reporting, and riveting, eye-opening anecdotes. The result is a bold and distinctive book, part detective story, part travel-writing, part essay on paranoia and secrecy in a digital age.

Chatter starts out at Menwith Hill, a secret eavesdropping station covered in mysterious, gargantuan golf balls, in England’s Yorkshire moors. From there, the narrative moves quickly to another American spy station hidden in the Australian outback; from the intelligence bureaucracy in Washington to the European Parliament in Brussels; from an abandoned National Security Agency base in the mountains of North Carolina to the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

As Keefe chases down the truth of contemporary surveillance by intelligence agencies, he unearths reams of little-known information and introduces us to a rogue’s gallery of unforgettable characters. We meet a former British eavesdropper who now listens in on the United States Air Force for sport; an intelligence translator who risked prison to reveal an American operation to spy on the United Nations Security Council; a former member of the Senate committee on intelligence who says that oversight is so bad, a lot of senators only sit on the committee for the travel.

Provocative, often funny, and alarming without being alarmist, Chatter is a journey through a bizarre and shadowy world with vast implications for our security as well as our privacy. It is also the debut of a major new voice in nonfiction.

Review:
“The secret global information network that has come together under the umbrella name ‘Echelon’ is detailed here by Yale Law student Keefe. While Great Britain led the way in the mid-’70s, Keefe marks the U.S., Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore and many others as current participants, taking satellite pictures from 10 miles up, sending submarines to hover silently and aiming portable laser devices to pick up conversations inside rooms. All the technologies are impressive, but the burgeoning mountain of data they produce, Keefe argues, does not always prove useful. Likewise, he illustrates how compact electronics can give the opposition a large ability to deceive the Echelon network, and/or to modify their behavior when they detect that they are under surveillance. Ultimately, Keefe makes a case that electronics have not solved the ancient dilemma of deciphering the enemy’s intentions (what he is actually planning) from his capabilities (all the things he could choose to do). To prove his point, Keefe cites the mass of rumor and innuendo that failed to give specific warning of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole as well as Colin Powell’s U.N. proclamation that Iraq possessed nerve gas. And, Keefe says, ordinary citizens pay a substantial cost in presumed privacy, as well as in potential for abuses of confidential data. Intelligent and polemical, Keefe’s study is sure to spark some political chatter of its own. Agent, Tina Bennett at Janklow & Nesbitt. (On sale Feb. 15)” Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:
“Spying on spies: an illuminating inquiry into little-visited corners of spookdom.” Kirkus Reviews

Review:
“[A] solid, well-researched overview of the international eavesdropping alliance called Echelon….To his credit, the author is evenhanded, leaving the reader to decide whether the disease is worth the cure.” Library Journal

Review:
“[An] engrossing survey of American signals intelligence, or Sigint, the global effort to electronically monitor our telephone conversations, our e-mails, and even our street movements.” Benjamin Strong, The Village Voice

Synopsis:
Provocative, often funny, and alarming without being alarmist, Chatter is a journey through the bizarre and shadowy world of global eavesdropping.