Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the National Security Agency (NSA). Book discusses the intelligence failure leading up to 9/11, and continues with the changes in data acquition, eavesdropping, and foreign as well as domestic surveillance from 9/11 to 2008. Discusses diminishing civil liberties in our efforts to improve national security. Occasionally overly detailed, describing the circuits, street addresses, and technology being used.
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A great account of the NSA (and the overall technical signals surveillance ecosystem, including other agencies and private companies). The one big missing area was TAO and some of the offensive cyber private contractors (covered somewhat, but not in depth).

By far the best is the account of the 9/11 hijacking, the NSA/CIA/FBI role in collecting and fucking that up, and then pushing for broad powers in response to their own failures, when extant law and systems would have been fine if properly applied at the time.

Michael Hayden comes off as possibly the worst possible NSA Director — he was too cautious in applying powers, due to legitimate fear of the Church committee and backlash against spying, but in being overly cautious he actually approved programs which were both less effective and more invasive (trailblazer vs thinthread). I wouldn’t judge anyone harshly for merely selecting a different point on the privacy/security efficient frontier, and sliding to the security side after 9/11, but he consistently picked choices far off the frontier. And after 9/11 they clearly overcorrected and went way overboard on claiming authority to do things (without legislative or judicial approval) for Cheney-driven reasons about asserting executive power, too, even when explicit authorization by Congress would have been both better and easier.

Also amazing the degree to which bureaucracy, politics, and just general incompetence limited access to collections (and resulting product) in places like Baghdad.

(One book I’d love to read is an account of Special Collection Service and NSA field ops, along with ISA/Orange, but that book probably would never be written.) ( )

I expected this to have had been made obsolete by (now not so) recent findings but was surprised how much was already widely known even then. Somehow that's not how I remembered it but there it is. Even the book makes comparisons with older scandals - this is a never-ending cycle. All of it seems laughably tame compared to the current situation. Well written, well researched book, still worth a read. ( )

Ai, yi, yi. Must read about US Intelligence both foreign and domestic; the NSA; the telecoms; the foreign hardware/software companies involved. Whew. ( )

Bamford has made a career of writing about the NSA. In this volume he recounts the events of 9/11 from the NSA's viewpoint, showing how they screwed up, refused to acknowledge it, and proceeded to ask for -- and get, tons of money to increase their surveillance capabilities. As he tells it, with the cooperation of the telcoms, the NSA now simply copies the Internet globally and mines the data. And who are the corporations who help it? Israeli companies founded by and staffed by former Israeli intelligence operatives or administrators.

Recent events about Snowden's revelations are old news in light of this 2008 book. What is clear is that the NSA is out of control, and the federal government does not want the NSA to be reigned in. Let's hope Congress will. ( )