Two Explanations for Confusion about US ISIS Members: Associational Claims and Watchlisting Procedures
Eli Lake has a piece trying to explain the big disparities between claimed numbers of Americans who have joined ISIS.
One might think that a government that secretly collected everyone’s cellphone records would be able to find out which Americans have joined ISIS. But actually that task is much harder than it would appear.
On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told CNN more than 100 Americans have pledged themselves to the group that declared itself a Caliphate in June after conquering Iraq’s second-largest city. Hagel added, “There may be more, we don’t know.” On Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman walked back Hagel’s remarks, saying the United States believes there are “maybe a dozen” Americans who have joined ISIS.
“We don’t know what we don’t know,” a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast when asked if there were more than 12 Americans in ISIS. “We have some identifying information on some of the Americans, it may not be their name but we have enough information. That said, we readily acknowledge that that number is probably low and there are others we don’t know about.”
“I think 12 is probably low only because there is always stuff we don’t know,” said Andrew Liepman, who left his post as the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2012 and is now a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. “I would not say that number is hugely low, but we always have to remember what we don’t know.”
But at least some of these discrepancies are actually quite easy to explain.
First, Lake jokes about the NSA’s dragnet. But that is actually one explanation for the larger numbers: in FISC documents, it is clear NSA treats association as transitive, meaning that an association with someone who is known to be associated with a group is itself, in many cases, considered evidence of association with the group. And some of this analysis is not going to go beyond metadata analysis (meaning NSA may not get around to reading the content to confirm the association unless the metadata patterns suggest some reason to prioritize the captured communication).
Thus, for any Americans who are in email or phone contact with a known or suspected member of ISIS, NSA likely considers them to be associated with ISIS. And remember, NSA’s collection of email and phone records overseas is almost certainly more extensive than their collection here, meaning those contact chains will be more exhaustive.
In addition, we know that the government considers traveling to an area of terrorist activity to be reasonable suspicion that someone is a known or suspected terrorist. The watchlist guidelines list just that as one behavioral indicator for being watchlisted as a known or suspected terrorist (see page 35).
3.9.4 Travel for no known lawful or legitimate purpose to a locus of TERRORIST ACTIVITY.
This means that any Americans who have traveled to Syria or Iraq are likely classified, by default, as terrorists. And many of those may have traveled for entirely different reasons (like freelance journalism).
That the Pentagon responded the way it did to Chuck Hagel’s fear-mongering is itself tacit admission that the government’s means of tracking terrorist affiliation sweep far wider than actual terrorist affiliation actually does. All Americans who have communicated with ISIS or traveled to Syria may not even want to join ISIS, and not all that want to will succeed in doing so. But NSA and NCTC are going to track everyone who might want to join, because that’s the best way to keep us safe.
Of course, that means the numbers can be used as Hagel used them, to fearmonger about the possible rather than the actual threat of American ISIS members.
All the more reason to make these watchlisting details public!
where DO these crazy kids come from?
here is one assessment using something called “numbers”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29043331
after all the hand-wringing and manipulation of americans’ fear responses by our military/paramilitary, these are the first detailed country-of-origin figures i’ve seen.
you’d never guess the overwhelming number are from the southern mediterranean crescent – tunisia being most heavily represented.
isis turns out to be a native iraqi group that found in syria lots of cannon fodder from north african countries.
salaam.
you see, the arab spring didn’t begin in tunisia in 2012,
the arab spring began on march 19, 2003 with the u.s. invasion of iraq. what has happened since in north african nations is just reverberations from that initial 2003 explosion of violence.
if only we had been satisfied to demonstrate our military superiority on dari and pashto speaking countries.
God I hate when I miss typos in headlines.
Two quibbles:
1. NSA collection of phone records overseas has to be less than here, not “almost certainly more extensive than their collection here,” bc their collection under 215 is systematic. But your point re e-mail metadata is persuasive.
2. It’s jarring to quote the standard re travel for “no known lawful or legitimate purpose to a locus of terrorist activity” and then immediately suggest that freelance journalists would get caught in that net, since freelance journalism is a lawful and legitimate purpose. Maybe unpack that more?
Okay, you’re an analyst somewhere, and your boss tells you, “I need to know how many Americans are members of ISIS.” Now, you know you can’t really answer that question accurately, for the reasons set forth above (and likely more reasons, too). So, what do you do? Do you say, “I really can’t tell?” and catch hell from your boss? Or do you make something up, and say, “It’s probably more than that, because.”
And what does your boss do, knowing your thinking process as above? Does she tell her boss, who is demanding the answer, “I really can’t tell?” and catch hell from her boss? Or does she make something up, and say, “It’s probably more than that, because.”
And so on up to the end of the line, where someone answers publicly, and the bloggers can then tear into the answer with bared fangs.
So really, is the IC any different from any other organization/bureaucracy/company where each employee’s primary motivation is to keep her job?
Friday Fun.
It’s a good thing that unanswered incoming email or phone calls from ISIS can’t get you labeled a terrorist. It can’t, right? Cause if it does then ISIS ought to start spamming and robo calling everyone in the USA.
“Thus, for any Americans who are in email or phone contact with a known or suspected member of ISIS, NSA likely considers them to be associated with ISIS. And remember, NSA’s collection of email and phone records overseas is almost certainly more extensive than their collection here, meaning those contact chains will be more exhaustive.”
How many of those suspects and ISIS-associated “folks” have Langley area codes and security clearance and work for Uncle Sam?