NSA’s secret domestic spying program, code named "Ragtime," uncloaked in new book

According to Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady's new book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, the secretive National Security Agency spying programs have become institutionalized, and have grown, since 9/11.

Shane Harris at the Washingtonian read through the book's account of these sweeping and controversial surveillance programs, conducted under the code name "Ragtime":

Ragtime, which appears in official reports by the abbreviation RT, consists of four parts.

Ragtime-A involves US-based interception of all foreign-to-foreign counterterrorism-related data; Ragtime-B deals with data from foreign governments that transits through the US; Ragtime-C deals with counterproliferation actvities; and then there's Ragtime-P, which will probably be of greatest interest to those who continue to demand more information from the NSA about what it does in the United States.

P stands for Patriot Act. Ragtime-P is the remnant of the original President’s Surveillance Program, the name given to so-called "warrantless wiretapping" activities after 9/11, in which one end of a phone call or an e-mail terminated inside the United States. That collection has since been brought under law, but civil liberties groups, journalists, and legal scholars continue to seek more information about what it entailed, who was targeted, and what authorities exist today for domestic intelligence-gathering.

Harris, who is an experienced national security reporter, analyzes some of those findings in his Washingtonian item. You can buy a copy of the book here (released Feb. 14, 2013).

(HT: Laura Poitras/Freedom of the Press Foundation)

• [Tim H]

  Was Constellation Games some sort of social commentary?  

  • [signsofrain]

    The NSA is eating our dead!

• [Cowicide]

  The comments on washingtonian.com are sad.  Many are quick to blame only Obama for this while at the same time forgetting it was the Bush Administration that pushed us over the edge.

  I just hope they take all that angst and  DO SOMETHING.

  • [AnthonyC]

    How? Now that no one even has standing to sue http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-1025_ihdj.pdf unless they can show that they are among those secretly wiretapped, the courts are very nearly closed off as an avenue of redress. Good luck getting Congress to repeal.

    • [Cowicide]

      https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/faq

• [Andrew Whitacre]

  Interesting that programs were broken down by audience, as opposed to medium, geography/risk correlation, etc. Means they *thought* about the law. Beyond that…

• [Bradley Robinson]

  I liked it better when what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.