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Ms Liann
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The reason to be PRO-ACTIVE is to cut down the time lag between the first alert and arrest.
Zazi was arrested two weeks after the first alert. He was in transit to
his bombing target with all the bomb parts to be assembled at his
destination. Had it taken a day or two longer he could have been blowing
up the NYC subways instead of being in jail already.
NSA was the middle piece. First MI6 of the British Secret Service
informed America of a known terrorist email address in Afghan. Then NSA
watched that email address and identified a sender as Zazi inside the
USA. The FBI then followed up and made the arrest.
In that case timesaving was vital.
The way that Zazi was identified was his email address and internet
service provider and phone company were already in a google-like search
engine filled by robot data collectors. No human eyes ever saw Zazi's
info until he connected to a known terrorist website in a foreign
country. A computer program sifted all the data on that email address
and it's connections to promptly identify Zazi. It could easily have
added days more time if that data was not already sitting in a secure
NSA computer awaiting a search key.
Nobody's privacy was bothered by that data sitting in a search engine,
not even Zazi. It wasn't until he crossed the line that his data got
seen by human eyes.
The reason to be PRO-ACTIVE is to cut down the time lag between the first alert and arrest.
Zazi was arrested two weeks after the first alert. He was in transit to his bombing target with all the bomb parts to be assembled at his destination. Had it taken a day or two longer he could have been blowing up the NYC subways instead of being in jail already.
NSA was the middle piece. First MI6 of the British Secret Service informed America of a known terrorist email address in Afghan. Then NSA watched that email address and identified a sender as Zazi inside the USA. The FBI then followed up and made the arrest.
In that case timesaving was vital.
The way that Zazi was identified was his email address and internet service provider and phone company were already in a google-like search engine filled by robot data collectors. No human eyes ever saw Zazi's info until he connected to a known terrorist website in a foreign country. A computer program sifted all the data on that email address and it's connections to promptly identify Zazi. It could easily have added days more time if that data was not already sitting in a secure NSA computer awaiting a search key.
Nobody's privacy was bothered by that data sitting in a search engine, not even Zazi. It wasn't until he crossed the line that his data got seen by human eyes.