55 million Pakistani cellphones likely monitored by NSA, states report
Members of Taliban, Al-Qaeda ISI operators likely to be labelled 'terrorists', suggests report
(Web Desk) – 55 million cell phones may have been potentially tapped by notorious American ntelligence agency NSA, states a report.
According to the report, members of Taliban, Al-Qaeda and even Pakistan’s intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have been labeled under the tab of ‘terrorists’.
According to a report by The Intercept, a government database by the name of Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), identifies potential persons and classifies them as “PROB”, meaning ‘probable’ terrorist.
The documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, paint a similar story as the current bureau chief of Al-Jazeera was labeled as ‘terrorist’ by the system deployed by SKYNET, an alarming name for a NSA-developed software system.
Who is a terrorist and why
The criteria for scoring high on ‘terrorist’ test by SKYNET comprise of following questions. Frequently affirmative responses may trigger a red flag.
“Excessive SIM or handset swapping”
“Incoming calls only,”
“Visits to airports,”
“Overnight trips.”
“Who has traveled from Peshawar to Faisalabad or Lahore (and back) in the past month?”
“Who does the traveler call when he arrives?”
A worrying point in the presentation provided by Snowden is that the call data is acquired from major Pakistani telecom providers, though the technical means of obtaining the data has not been revealed.
“We kill people based on metadata...”
-Former NSA director Michael Hayden, May 2014
Metadata can be defined as the sum of data, stastistics and location of the bulk calls stored in servers to detect ‘suspicious’ patterns.
According to CIA, Osama Bin Laden’s operation in Abbottabad was also a collection of metadata and statistics that struck the right cords to identify the world’s most wanted man.
"There are lies, damned lies and statistics." - Mark Twain
But a worrying factor behind the analytics and mechanism that generates metadata is that people who work in contact with terrorists may also be labeled as one.
Is the system reliable enough to be entrusted with lives of people or is it a bridge too far to cross?
