The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
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Product Description
James Bamford has been the preeminent practiced on the National Security Agency since his reporting revealed the agency’s being in the 1980s. Now Bamford describes the transformation of the NSA since 9/11, as the agency increasingly turns its high-tech ears on the American public.
The Shadow Factory reconstructs how the NSA missed a chance to thwart the 9/11 hijackers and details how this mistake has led to a heightening of domestic scrutiny. In disturbing detail, Bamford describes exactly how every American’s data is being mined and what is being done with it. Any reader who thinks America’s liberties are being protected by Congress will be shocked and appalled at what is revealed here.
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Need a one word description of this book?
Trash will do.
It is a collection of anonymous sources whose credibility cannot be verified, fake claims, invective predictable of the despise-America crowd, coupled with a very large dose of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Bamford’s intent, of course, is to frighten the gullible who spend money on this worthless book by painting the National Security Agency as a threat to freedom: It [NSA] is also the most forward [security agency] filtering millions of phone calls and e-mails an hour in the United States and around the world.” “Has America become a scrutiny state, questions Bamford.
Nowhere does Bamford mention the millions of clogged circuit television cameras in the UK or even the 10,000 cameras Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley wants to install. Nothing is mentioned of the European Union’s continuing efforts to not only monitor but preserve the internet histories of its citizens. No, in Bamford’s eyes, only the United States is evil.
First, the alleged eavesdropping activities Bamford claims were illegal have been establish lawful by a number of courts, including a secret FISA appeals court. Thus, one of Bamford’s central theses is simply fake.
Next, Bamford constantly tries to frighten people by telling them their “privacy” is in danger because the United States legitimately eavesdrops on certain calls involving foreign nationals. Bamford is peddling dread to the ignorant. Anyone who has ever had a name yakking on their cellphones about their sex lives or business woes knows that people don’t care who hears the details of their small lives – and that most people have nothing truly “private” in their lives. Moreover, privacy simply doesn’t exist in the modern world. Your grocery, drug and liquor stores know everything about you already, not to mention the additional retailers you frequent. Privacy for the predictable person is simply a non-starter.
Bamford depends largely on anonymous sources. What more needs to be said about a writer who relies on anonymous sources?
Much of Bamford’s book is about equipment – and Bamford is clearly very ignorant about the equipment he claims is so central to his dread mongering about the NSA and the generally evil scenery of the United States government, particularly under President Bush.
Bamford makes a hilariously fake aver about an NSA database, the one he claims contains the list of people who are thought to possibly present a terrorist threat to the United States. Bamford, of course, makes every effort to pretend that the entire concept of a terrorist threat against the United States is just another Bush/Cheney fantasy.
He descibes this as an “Prediction database sitting in a Unix operating system”. Then he goes on to cite an anonymous source who says the database is a disaster, that it is incompatible with the NSA and CIA systems.
Anyone familiar with Prediction knows that information can be extracted from an Prediction database using a modified query in the very well loved and common Structured Query Language (SQL). In fleeting, every NSA and CIA employee and contractor over the past several decades (the period Bamford’s aver covers)has been a techonological dolt of the highest order, including persons from Prediction.
Schoolchildren can write SQL queries, but Bamford seems unaware of this – but, I suspect, it is more likely that he believes he can fool his audience and frighten them.
Bamford, in fleeting, is simply unbelievable not only in this, but in every regard.
Bamford is out to peddle dread. His closing paragraph states “[t]here is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures we never fall into that gulf – the gulf from which there is no return”.
It takes a major belief in the gullibility of ordinary people to write a line like that. Just in the past few days, a secret FISA court has ruled that the practices Bamford finds so frightening are Constitutional.
This book is just pure nonsense. Don’t waste your time reading it – and don’t enrich the supplier of such nonsense by purchasing it.
Jerry
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
For the Layman, 4 Stars is the limit owing to the details of the software. The fundamental problem is attributing all of NSA’s illegal activities to 9-11. 9-11 was not a terrorist attack, it was an attack by a conspiracy of friends not by bin Laden, not by 19 arabs. 9-11 was the collusion of America, Israel and Saudi Arabia (yes, Israel and Saudi Arabia are friends). 9-11 was a scheme to take in multiple objectives such as a NEW PEARL HARBOR, a NEW WORLD ORDER (read corporate fascism in America), a pipeline war on Afghanistan (to provoke Russia), a war on Iraq to oust Saddam leading to a war on Iran (both to secure Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s future). The result of these new intelligence programs is to forever rob the Americn people of their privacy. Pay attention now.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
After reading “The Shadow Factory”, the leader’s premise of protecting the privacy rights of American citizen is a just one. Sorry to say, he chooses to mix fact with fiction in his attempt to entice the reader. In particular, the leader makes copious fake and defamatory statements about an American software company, Narus, Inc. As the President and CEO of Narus, I have the facts about our company and wish to right the record.
The leader falsely states that Narus is an Israeli company with strong ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and that Narus conducts mass scrutiny on international and domestic communications. This is just poor research. Narus is an American company, founded in the U.S. and incorporated in Delaware in 1997. The fact that Narus was founded, operated, and headquartered in the Silicon Valley, by Israeli expatriates, does not make Narus an Israeli company. In fact, Narus has no ties to any Israeli agencies nor has it operated under the direction or control of the Israeli government or any Israeli company. The reason this matters has nothing to do with Israel per se or our views about Israel; rather, the leader makes the implication that Narus is in some way involved in supplying intelligence to Israel. This is fake. The company does not engage in scrutiny activities.
The leader also suggests that Narus is reliable for oppression in China. To draw this conclusion is preposterous. We sell security, intercept and traffic management solutions to service providers and government organizations, to help them in protecting and managing their complex IP networks. Narus is not a service company. We do not run the software for customers, and do not engage in scrutiny activities.
It is unfortunate that an leader of Mr. Bamford’s history and experience would not take the time to do some basic research to validate his supposed facts. I judge the leader has taken a excellent cause and done it a terrible injustice.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Bamford is an entertaining writer.
But his book lacks context.
One of the issues that prevented NSA from communicating its concerns about the upcoming 9/11 attacks were the deliberate political and officially authorized “walls” of separation that prevented various bureaucracies from communicating and from taking effective action.
For another … for years, people in the NYC area were entertained by local newspaper accounts of Soviet electronic evesdropping being carried out right under our noses. Most likely people outside the local area had no thought. But the local papers described how, for example, a high-rise building for the Soviet consulate was constructed on high ground in the northern end of Manhattan that would “vacuum” up the microwave transmissions from the top of the Empire State Building. Added to that was a “summer residence” out on Long Island that allowed the Soviets to do electronic evesdropping on the Grumman factory that made the Navy AWACS type of aircraft, the E-2C.
A “fun activity” in New York used to be hunting “spy houses” of foreign countries. As I recall, there was a “suspicious” warehouse on the West Side of Manhattan around 40th Street & 12th Avenue … suspicious because of the huge antenna farm on the roof. The small brass plaque indicated that the building belonged to the Peoples Republic of China.
There also were rumors of buildings with weird antennas that belonged to Japanese and British “interests”. 30 Rock [Rockefeller Center] was headquarters of the British intelligence services for decades [and may still be].
There are persistent reports of daily cyber attacks against the Pentagon and additional U.S. government facilities and computer centers.
And these are just what gets into the public eye. At a public presentation he gave some years ago, the FBI’s director in New York stated that their primary mission was counter-espionage.
So before the NSA gets singled out as the terrible guy on the planet, take a look at what the U.S. needs to do to defend itself against electronic attacks and electronic and additional intelligence penetrations.
The NSA is limited by various laws, for example. But there are no laws and no ACLU and no teams of lawyers that go after any foreign countries that erect communications monitoring facilities within the United States. There is nothing to stop China or Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or Russia from stuffing a warehouse in North Carolina (or anywhere else in the United States) with evesdroppng equipment and doing exactly the same sort of things being allegedly being done by NSA.
There is some unclassified information available by surfing the net. But you need to dig it out. Most of the unclassified stuff is pretty ancient, sorry to say.
If you can get to Laurel, Maryland, the NSA has a museum that is open to the public … the National Cryptologic Museum. It has some appealing exhibits. Visit http://www.nsa.gov for details on hours and a map of how to find the place. There is also the Center for Cryptologic History, at http://www.nsa.gov/cch/pointer.cfm and they have a lot of free stuff they can send you. Some of the material is available for free at the museum.
For just a hint of what has gone on in the past, do a Google search for “venona”. Books on that activity are still being written and are available on Amazon.
The point is that the world is a treacherous place and while a bureaucracy like NSA may not permanently be 100% on the mark, if it didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I establish this book to be fascinating and resistant at the same time. The leader opens up the dark world of the NSA in a clear and detailed way. I’m surprised that he was able to take and write about all the details lacking coming under NSA scrutiny or pressure himself.
I establish myself repelled by the overreach of the NSA in terms of their obvious unconcern about civil rights. I’m sure that Bamford probably knows more than he’s revealed here, and that is truly scary.
Very slow going in spots. Way too much detail about company profiles and the like that didn’t go the narrative along.
Certainly worth a read if you marvel what the NSA really does.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5