8 ms·

Interesting to get a look at what it's like to be inside the bubble. It's compartmentalized enough that the individual actors can justify their actions by the a

by jonknee 13y ago

Interesting to get a look at what it's like to be inside the bubble. It's compartmentalized enough that the individual actors can justify their actions by the assumed competence and benevolence of the others. > I didn't test it, but I'm sure there was automated analysis that prevented or flagged use of US selectors. The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about. However, in the immediately previous paragraph, he noted: > one employee spied on a spouse So much for automated analysis, besides not being able to filter out US citizens' data it can't even filter out an employee's direct family. But there's no need to worry citizen, the NSA has a very high-quality workforce. In the NY Times this morning was a piece noting that the government has concluded they don't know what files Snowden took with him (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/us/officials-say-us-may-never-know-extent-of-snowdens-leaks.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/us/officials-say-us-may-ne...). The most technologically advanced intelligence agency in the history of the world and they have no idea what files were electronically taken by one of their own. One of their own who passed the background check by the way--I don't know why the OP is so enamored with the polygraph.

revelation 13y ago
Well, following his explanations, you can fail the polygraph and just do it again. The cost of failure is zero, so really just keep trying. (I personally loved the bizarre mix between cyber war, nukes and North Korea. He seems to have the mindset of a paranoid Stalin, always wary of others when he's the one terrorizing.)
- jonknee 13y ago
  Definitely a bizarre mix, I thought it was a parody a couple of times. To combat the threat of nuclear war with the completely isolated totalitarian state of North Korea we must create and store copies of all global communication... (Of which approximately none will have originated in NK, our intelligence agencies still literally watch NK news broadcasts to find out what's going on in NK.)
  - mercurial 13y ago
    North Korea surely has contacts with the rest of world, to deal with China, for instance.
    - jonknee 13y ago
      Yes, but you don't copy all communications to try and find the astonishingly small number from the most closed-off country in the world. This is how the NSA gets smart people to build something they would never set out to build--an all powerful global snapshot of data. They tell you about North Korea and your radioactive future. You like big problems and give it your best effort, perhaps thinking that you had a small part in saving the world. Then one day you read in the New York Times that your well intended project doesn't just scoop up communications from North Korean thugs, but what you helped make is collecting communications on everyone. It's helping the DEA illegally bust people. It's helping diplomats illegally snoop on our allies. It's helping keep US companies aware of what non-US companies are doing. Etc etc. tl;dr Anyone could be a terrorist, everyone must be monitored.
      - mercurial 13y ago
        I absolutely don't dispute that. I am merely pointing out that there is a small number of messages to intercept. The traffic with the AQ Khan network would be a good example. That said, no, it does not justify turning the world into a surveillance state.
      - secthrowaway 13y ago
        > Yes, but you don't copy all communications to try and find the astonishingly small number from the most closed-off country in the world. What would your collection proposal be then? You can't determine data of interest until you have sufficient data to determine if it's of interest in the first place. Even the NSA doesn't have an Oracle computer that can look into the future and figure out what vanishingly small percentage of communications are just the ones they should be interested in. If they did, they could also solve the halting problem and rewrite the history of computer science and time-travel. Remember, the standard the NSA is held up to is that it should not only be following known bad people who are/might be doing bad things, but to ferret out the unknown bad people. Every time there's a Boston or similar, everybody goes and climbs all over the NSA for "not knowing about these guys" You can't do that until you have a sufficiently large enough collection of unevaluated data to start looking through. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, only that it's the reality of the task spy agencies have before them.
- christianmann 13y ago
  At a certain point they're likely to cut you off and stop wasting their time watching you fail the poly.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Well, following his explanations, you can fail the polygraph and just do it again. He didn't say you had an arbitrary number of opportunities to pass, simply that the screening (of which polygraph was one of many he mentioned) is such that it's not as if NSA analysts are able to simply wander their way into the NSA so that they can then spy on the people. That doesn't mean people can't make it through all the screenings (just ask Snowden), simply that it's one of many safeguards that are put in place to make it so difficult to land an NSA job for nefarious reasons that the many other layers of oversight and controls should be adequate to prevent gross abuses.
rdtsc 13y ago
> It's compartmentalized enough that the individual actors can justify their actions by the assumed competence and benevolence of the others. I've talked to this before but this denial and self delusion is an important defense mechanism. Sometimes people write blogs and get into apologetic because they feel an internal dull pain of an inconsistency. "Hmm it looks we NSA did all these pretty bad things. I worked for them NSA. Surely I couldn't have worked for the bad guys." and then <proceed rationalizing and defending NSA, might as well put it in blog form>. That cognitive dissonance, I believe, is pretty powerful. A lot of dark secrets and past transgressions can be filtered so well throw it.
- ANH 13y ago
  I'd rather intel analysts have some cognitive dissonance than have absolute certainty they are always justified in their actions.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    Unlike a lot of HN commentators who blindly follow the herd (i expect to get a ton a dv's for that)
    - jessedhillon 13y ago
      Seriously, you can't win. Here you have an actual former NSA employee giving a first-hand account of his time there -- and not only his account doubted for no reason other than failure-to-comply with known-biases and unverifiable journalism, but some guy is now providing psychological analysis of him as well! Some know-nothing armchair psychologist who read the NYT is telling this guy -- who has made an honest effort to be utterly transparent -- that he's cognitively dissonant and that comment is going to receive a hundred votes because it makes people feel good about the things they think they know. It's not truth, just an exercise in mass delusion.
gaius 13y ago
"Are we the bad guys?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY <---- that's inside the bubble
rst 13y ago
What's particularly interesting is that some of the recent disclosures don't seem to be visible inside the bubble. Take this assertion, for instance: "The NSA copy of my emails won't be viewed by police or FBI investigating me about marijuana use, for instance. Law enforcement might get a search warrant and retrieve a copy from Google, but not from the NSA." In fact, it's been known for months that the DEA receives intercepts from the NSA in such volume that they have an office devoted to handling them (the DEA's "Special Operations Division"). And as for search warrants, the manuals for that office describe a practice of "parallel construction" which involves, not to put to fine a point on it, lying about the ultimate source of the information they're using, with the clear intent of evading judicial scrutiny. Details here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE9761AZ20130807 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE...
- sitkack 13y ago
  It really depends on how widely it is reported. Government employees even those with clearance are prohibited from looking at the wikileaks cables. If it makes it into the NYT and they see it, then it is ok. But they can't actively dig for it. Direct from the mouths of government employees.
  - windexh8er 13y ago
    Again, an assumption that a magical unicorn guards the morality of being told what someone can or cannot do should be understood as a non-trustworthy system. Especially one that is referred to as the NSA in very general terms - as they have no control over employees or data dissemination / exfiltration. And, yes, the last statement is fact based on all of the supporting evidence in the public domain. If one thinks otherwise I politely redirect you back to aforementioned magical unicorns.
    - secthrowaway 13y ago
      Outside of magical unicorns, what kind of unicorn should guard things? I'm afraid automated systems don't offer either the coverage or the flexibility to provide what you think should be provided.
felipeerias 13y ago
The most extraordinary thing about Snowden is not that he took the documents: it is that he sacrificed his whole life to make them public. And this should make us scared. A guy like Snowden was extremely improbable, and yet he happened. So, what to think about the far more likely case of NSA employees taking extremely sensitive information and selling it privately? How many of those have there been already?
- GVIrish 13y ago
  1000 times this. If Snowden could do what he did and the NSA doesn't even know what he took, it is inevitable that a hostile foreign government will infiltrate the NSA. It is also highly probable that there are people in the intelligence apparatus that are abusing their power in some way or another. There have already been about a dozen cases in the NSA of 'LOVEINT' where employees were spying illicitly on love interests. From what I recall, all of those people volunteered that they were spying illegally on their own, none of them were caught by any internal review process.
mpyne 13y ago
> The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about. For the life of me I cannot figure out why people refuse to accept the concept of training and policy as being relevant to proper civil liberties safeguards in addition to technical ones. Imagine applying that idea to any other field, and keep in mind the unintended consequences. For instance consider from a soldier's perspective "Since I've been told I can't shoot citizens or non-combatants, I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens and non-combatants have nothing to worry about." And yet our troops do have issued firearms (at least during things like field exercises and training), and the republic has not fallen to a coup. There are missile siloes dotted throughout the Midwest, yet no rogue junior officers or missileers have launched ICBMs at people. You're missing his greater point, which seems to be that it didn't even occur to him to "test the interlock" since he knew that by law and by policy, it was wrong to even try. He also made quite clear (if you'd bother to read to the end instead of cherry-picking quotes to declaim) that this doesn't mean such technical controls can't or shouldn't be strengthed, merely that there is indeed a "culture of compliance" among the analysts instead of a bunch of voyeurs. > > one employee spied on a spouse > So much for automated analysis, besides not being able to filter out US citizens' data it can't even filter out an employee's direct family. But there's no need to worry citizen, the NSA has a very high-quality workforce. Is it really your claim that a workforce must be 100% perfect in every way for an organization to be legitimate? Even the anarchists don't try to claim that there won't eventually be murderers amongst them, nor is there anywhere else in the real world where spouses are always exceptionally nice to each other in everything they do. Just ask Ashley Madison. > The most technologically advanced intelligence agency in the history of the world and they have no idea what files were electronically taken by one of their own. They also haven't solved the Halting Problem. But anyways I know I'm going to be speaking to an uncooperative crowd but perhaps you all should consider the high-level points of his "peek inside" and then discuss the ramifications of that, instead of always drilling down into the weeds. Many of the same arguments used here could be used with equal logic toward every large civilian IT concern, which would tend to devastate the need for things like YC capital. :P
- Peaker 13y ago
  > Imagine applying that idea to any other field, and keep in mind the unintended consequences The difference from other fields, is that the consequences in other fields are public. If a soldier shoots someone, that someone is dead and can prompt an investigation. If someone in the NSA abuses his powers, it is very likely that nobody will ever know. Or be able to know. No investigation will be triggered, and even if one is, it cannot possibly gather any evidence.
m8urn 13y ago
It all seems so sincere. Except when you see how closely this matches the talking points the NSA sent home with employees (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/844508/nsas-talking-points-for-holiday-gatherings.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8445...)
- tripzilch 13y ago
  Whoa. The above PDF link is very much worth clicking. Almost all of those points (except maybe the very last one) are echoed by the OP. Except that this hand-out is straight-out propaganda and the OP sort of tried to veil that.
rl3 13y ago
> The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about. I think it's fair to say most rank and file NSA employees are honest and actually do believe in their mission. The far scarier thought is how things may work at an extremely senior level (contractors included), where there's literally nobody there to watch the watchers, or at least challenge them without being fired and blackballed. That said, "US selectors" shouldn't return the results that they do in the first place. Obviously there's incidental collection, which is unavoidable. But the notion of incidental collection, as with metadata collection, was hijacked and used in public relations messaging as a cover for actual domestic collection programs that intentionally capture the full contents of nearly all domestic communications within the United States. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec13/whistleblowers_08-01.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec1... Despite exceptions such as the article above, this messaging has largely been successful. Even The Guardian and The Washington Post---organizations who publish stories directly sourced from documents leaked by Snowden---routinely fail to underscore the critical difference between actual collection, and "collection" in the sense of mere authorized access to data that's already intercepted and stored. The two have been intentionally conflated as part of a semantics game, and it's working beautifully to mislead the American public about what's actually happening.
- secthrowaway 13y ago
  > That said, "US selectors" shouldn't return the results that they do in the first place. Determining if a "selector" is tied to a U.S. person is actually a very subtle and very hard problem. Let's take a phone number +1 (212) 555-1234 Is this a US selector? It's a selector for a phone in the US, but that's not the same thing as a phone number tied to a US citizen. Let's say I'm following a senior North African pirate with a Maltese mobile +356 2010-1234 and he calls/is called by my number above? - Should I follow it? Or is it absolutely off limits for me because it happens to be a U.S. number? - How do I determine if it's tied to a U.S. person? - What if it's a shared number between a group of associates, all of whom are not U.S. persons except for one? - Is that number off limits now? - If it is a U.S. person what should I do with it? - Pretend it doesn't exist? Turn it over to U.S. Federal law enforcement? Who should I turn it over to? DEA? FBI? ATF? DHS? The Coast Guard? U.S. Customs and Border Patrol? It's actually a significant intelligence task to figure this out.

by jonknee 13y ago

revelation 13y ago

Well, following his explanations, you can fail the polygraph and just do it again. The cost of failure is zero, so really just keep trying. (I personally loved the bizarre mix between cyber war, nukes and North Korea. He seems to have the mindset of a paranoid Stalin, always wary of others when he's the one terrorizing.)

jonknee 13y ago
Definitely a bizarre mix, I thought it was a parody a couple of times. To combat the threat of nuclear war with the completely isolated totalitarian state of North Korea we must create and store copies of all global communication... (Of which approximately none will have originated in NK, our intelligence agencies still literally watch NK news broadcasts to find out what's going on in NK.)
- mercurial 13y ago
  North Korea surely has contacts with the rest of world, to deal with China, for instance.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Yes, but you don't copy all communications to try and find the astonishingly small number from the most closed-off country in the world. This is how the NSA gets smart people to build something they would never set out to build--an all powerful global snapshot of data. They tell you about North Korea and your radioactive future. You like big problems and give it your best effort, perhaps thinking that you had a small part in saving the world. Then one day you read in the New York Times that your well intended project doesn't just scoop up communications from North Korean thugs, but what you helped make is collecting communications on everyone. It's helping the DEA illegally bust people. It's helping diplomats illegally snoop on our allies. It's helping keep US companies aware of what non-US companies are doing. Etc etc. tl;dr Anyone could be a terrorist, everyone must be monitored.
    - mercurial 13y ago
      I absolutely don't dispute that. I am merely pointing out that there is a small number of messages to intercept. The traffic with the AQ Khan network would be a good example. That said, no, it does not justify turning the world into a surveillance state.
    - secthrowaway 13y ago
      > Yes, but you don't copy all communications to try and find the astonishingly small number from the most closed-off country in the world. What would your collection proposal be then? You can't determine data of interest until you have sufficient data to determine if it's of interest in the first place. Even the NSA doesn't have an Oracle computer that can look into the future and figure out what vanishingly small percentage of communications are just the ones they should be interested in. If they did, they could also solve the halting problem and rewrite the history of computer science and time-travel. Remember, the standard the NSA is held up to is that it should not only be following known bad people who are/might be doing bad things, but to ferret out the unknown bad people. Every time there's a Boston or similar, everybody goes and climbs all over the NSA for "not knowing about these guys" You can't do that until you have a sufficiently large enough collection of unevaluated data to start looking through. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, only that it's the reality of the task spy agencies have before them.
christianmann 13y ago
At a certain point they're likely to cut you off and stop wasting their time watching you fail the poly.
mpyne 13y ago
> Well, following his explanations, you can fail the polygraph and just do it again. He didn't say you had an arbitrary number of opportunities to pass, simply that the screening (of which polygraph was one of many he mentioned) is such that it's not as if NSA analysts are able to simply wander their way into the NSA so that they can then spy on the people. That doesn't mean people can't make it through all the screenings (just ask Snowden), simply that it's one of many safeguards that are put in place to make it so difficult to land an NSA job for nefarious reasons that the many other layers of oversight and controls should be adequate to prevent gross abuses.

rdtsc 13y ago

> It's compartmentalized enough that the individual actors can justify their actions by the assumed competence and benevolence of the others. I've talked to this before but this denial and self delusion is an important defense mechanism. Sometimes people write blogs and get into apologetic because they feel an internal dull pain of an inconsistency. "Hmm it looks we NSA did all these pretty bad things. I worked for them NSA. Surely I couldn't have worked for the bad guys." and then <proceed rationalizing and defending NSA, might as well put it in blog form>. That cognitive dissonance, I believe, is pretty powerful. A lot of dark secrets and past transgressions can be filtered so well throw it.

ANH 13y ago
I'd rather intel analysts have some cognitive dissonance than have absolute certainty they are always justified in their actions.
- walshemj 13y ago
  Unlike a lot of HN commentators who blindly follow the herd (i expect to get a ton a dv's for that)
  - jessedhillon 13y ago
    Seriously, you can't win. Here you have an actual former NSA employee giving a first-hand account of his time there -- and not only his account doubted for no reason other than failure-to-comply with known-biases and unverifiable journalism, but some guy is now providing psychological analysis of him as well! Some know-nothing armchair psychologist who read the NYT is telling this guy -- who has made an honest effort to be utterly transparent -- that he's cognitively dissonant and that comment is going to receive a hundred votes because it makes people feel good about the things they think they know. It's not truth, just an exercise in mass delusion.

gaius 13y ago

"Are we the bad guys?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY <---- that's inside the bubble

rst 13y ago

What's particularly interesting is that some of the recent disclosures don't seem to be visible inside the bubble. Take this assertion, for instance: "The NSA copy of my emails won't be viewed by police or FBI investigating me about marijuana use, for instance. Law enforcement might get a search warrant and retrieve a copy from Google, but not from the NSA." In fact, it's been known for months that the DEA receives intercepts from the NSA in such volume that they have an office devoted to handling them (the DEA's "Special Operations Division"). And as for search warrants, the manuals for that office describe a practice of "parallel construction" which involves, not to put to fine a point on it, lying about the ultimate source of the information they're using, with the clear intent of evading judicial scrutiny. Details here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE9761AZ20130807 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE...

sitkack 13y ago
It really depends on how widely it is reported. Government employees even those with clearance are prohibited from looking at the wikileaks cables. If it makes it into the NYT and they see it, then it is ok. But they can't actively dig for it. Direct from the mouths of government employees.
- windexh8er 13y ago
  Again, an assumption that a magical unicorn guards the morality of being told what someone can or cannot do should be understood as a non-trustworthy system. Especially one that is referred to as the NSA in very general terms - as they have no control over employees or data dissemination / exfiltration. And, yes, the last statement is fact based on all of the supporting evidence in the public domain. If one thinks otherwise I politely redirect you back to aforementioned magical unicorns.
  - secthrowaway 13y ago
    Outside of magical unicorns, what kind of unicorn should guard things? I'm afraid automated systems don't offer either the coverage or the flexibility to provide what you think should be provided.

felipeerias 13y ago

The most extraordinary thing about Snowden is not that he took the documents: it is that he sacrificed his whole life to make them public. And this should make us scared. A guy like Snowden was extremely improbable, and yet he happened. So, what to think about the far more likely case of NSA employees taking extremely sensitive information and selling it privately? How many of those have there been already?

GVIrish 13y ago
1000 times this. If Snowden could do what he did and the NSA doesn't even know what he took, it is inevitable that a hostile foreign government will infiltrate the NSA. It is also highly probable that there are people in the intelligence apparatus that are abusing their power in some way or another. There have already been about a dozen cases in the NSA of 'LOVEINT' where employees were spying illicitly on love interests. From what I recall, all of those people volunteered that they were spying illegally on their own, none of them were caught by any internal review process.

mpyne 13y ago

> The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about. For the life of me I cannot figure out why people refuse to accept the concept of training and policy as being relevant to proper civil liberties safeguards in addition to technical ones. Imagine applying that idea to any other field, and keep in mind the unintended consequences. For instance consider from a soldier's perspective "Since I've been told I can't shoot citizens or non-combatants, I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens and non-combatants have nothing to worry about." And yet our troops do have issued firearms (at least during things like field exercises and training), and the republic has not fallen to a coup. There are missile siloes dotted throughout the Midwest, yet no rogue junior officers or missileers have launched ICBMs at people. You're missing his greater point, which seems to be that it didn't even occur to him to "test the interlock" since he knew that by law and by policy, it was wrong to even try. He also made quite clear (if you'd bother to read to the end instead of cherry-picking quotes to declaim) that this doesn't mean such technical controls can't or shouldn't be strengthed, merely that there is indeed a "culture of compliance" among the analysts instead of a bunch of voyeurs. > > one employee spied on a spouse > So much for automated analysis, besides not being able to filter out US citizens' data it can't even filter out an employee's direct family. But there's no need to worry citizen, the NSA has a very high-quality workforce. Is it really your claim that a workforce must be 100% perfect in every way for an organization to be legitimate? Even the anarchists don't try to claim that there won't eventually be murderers amongst them, nor is there anywhere else in the real world where spouses are always exceptionally nice to each other in everything they do. Just ask Ashley Madison. > The most technologically advanced intelligence agency in the history of the world and they have no idea what files were electronically taken by one of their own. They also haven't solved the Halting Problem. But anyways I know I'm going to be speaking to an uncooperative crowd but perhaps you all should consider the high-level points of his "peek inside" and then discuss the ramifications of that, instead of always drilling down into the weeds. Many of the same arguments used here could be used with equal logic toward every large civilian IT concern, which would tend to devastate the need for things like YC capital. :P

Peaker 13y ago
> Imagine applying that idea to any other field, and keep in mind the unintended consequences The difference from other fields, is that the consequences in other fields are public. If a soldier shoots someone, that someone is dead and can prompt an investigation. If someone in the NSA abuses his powers, it is very likely that nobody will ever know. Or be able to know. No investigation will be triggered, and even if one is, it cannot possibly gather any evidence.

m8urn 13y ago

It all seems so sincere. Except when you see how closely this matches the talking points the NSA sent home with employees (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/844508/nsas-talking-points-for-holiday-gatherings.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8445...)

tripzilch 13y ago
Whoa. The above PDF link is very much worth clicking. Almost all of those points (except maybe the very last one) are echoed by the OP. Except that this hand-out is straight-out propaganda and the OP sort of tried to veil that.

rl3 13y ago

> The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about. I think it's fair to say most rank and file NSA employees are honest and actually do believe in their mission. The far scarier thought is how things may work at an extremely senior level (contractors included), where there's literally nobody there to watch the watchers, or at least challenge them without being fired and blackballed. That said, "US selectors" shouldn't return the results that they do in the first place. Obviously there's incidental collection, which is unavoidable. But the notion of incidental collection, as with metadata collection, was hijacked and used in public relations messaging as a cover for actual domestic collection programs that intentionally capture the full contents of nearly all domestic communications within the United States. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec13/whistleblowers_08-01.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec1... Despite exceptions such as the article above, this messaging has largely been successful. Even The Guardian and The Washington Post---organizations who publish stories directly sourced from documents leaked by Snowden---routinely fail to underscore the critical difference between actual collection, and "collection" in the sense of mere authorized access to data that's already intercepted and stored. The two have been intentionally conflated as part of a semantics game, and it's working beautifully to mislead the American public about what's actually happening.

secthrowaway 13y ago
> That said, "US selectors" shouldn't return the results that they do in the first place. Determining if a "selector" is tied to a U.S. person is actually a very subtle and very hard problem. Let's take a phone number +1 (212) 555-1234 Is this a US selector? It's a selector for a phone in the US, but that's not the same thing as a phone number tied to a US citizen. Let's say I'm following a senior North African pirate with a Maltese mobile +356 2010-1234 and he calls/is called by my number above? - Should I follow it? Or is it absolutely off limits for me because it happens to be a U.S. number? - How do I determine if it's tied to a U.S. person? - What if it's a shared number between a group of associates, all of whom are not U.S. persons except for one? - Is that number off limits now? - If it is a U.S. person what should I do with it? - Pretend it doesn't exist? Turn it over to U.S. Federal law enforcement? Who should I turn it over to? DEA? FBI? ATF? DHS? The Coast Guard? U.S. Customs and Border Patrol? It's actually a significant intelligence task to figure this out.