MAINWAY


MAINWAY is a database maintained by the United States' National Security Agency containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the largest telephone carriers in the United States, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
The existence of this database and the NSA program that compiled it was unknown to the general public until USA Today broke the story on May 10, 2006.
It is estimated that the database contains over 1.9 trillion call-detail records. The records include detailed call information for use in traffic analysis and social network analysis, but do not include audio information or transcripts of the content of the phone calls.
According to former NSA director Michael Hayden, the NSA sought to deploy MAINWAY prior to 9/11 in response to the Millennium Plot but did not do so because it did not comply with US law. Hayden wrote: "The answer from was clear: '... you can't do this. As of June 2013, the database stores metadata for at least five years. According to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James Risen, MAINWAY was the most important of the four components that comprised the ThinThread program.
The database's existence has prompted fierce objections. It is often viewed as an illegal warrantless search and violation of the pen register provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The George W. Bush administration neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the domestic call record database. This contrasts with a related NSA controversy concerning warrantless surveillance of selected telephone calls; in that case they did confirm the existence of the program of debated legality. That program's code name was Stellar Wind.
Similar programs exist or are planned in other countries, including Sweden and Great Britain.
The MAINWAY equivalent for Internet traffic is MARINA.

Content

According to an anonymous source, the database is "the largest database ever assembled in the world," and contains call-detail records for all phone calls, domestic and international. A call-detail record consists of the phone numbers of the callers and recipients along with time, position and duration of the call. While the database does not contain specific names or addresses, that information is widely available from non-classified sources.
According to the research group TeleGeography, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth connected nearly 500 billion telephone calls in 2005 and nearly two trillion calls since late 2001. It is reported that all four companies were paid to provide the information to the NSA.

Usage

Although such a database of phone records would not be useful as a tool in itself for national security, it could be used as an element of broader national security analytical efforts and data mining. These efforts could involve analysts using the data to connect phone numbers with names and links to persons of interest. Such efforts have been the focus of the NSA's recent attempts to acquire key technologies from high tech firms in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Link analysis software, such as Link Explorer or the Analyst's Notebook, is used by law enforcement to organize and view links that are demonstrated through such information as telephone and financial records, which are imported into the program from other sources. Neural network software is used to detect patterns, classify and cluster data as well as forecast future events.
Using relational mathematics, it is possible to find out if someone changes their telephone number by analyzing and comparing calling patterns.
ThinThread, a system designed largely by William Binney, which pre-dated this database, but was discarded for the Trailblazer Project, introduced some of the technology which is used to analyze the data. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA, admitted as much in an interview, saying: "But we judged fundamentally that as good as was, and believe me, we pulled a whole bunch of elements out of it and used it for our final solution for these problems, as good as it was, it couldn't scale sufficiently to the volume of modern communications." Where ThinThread encrypted privacy data, however, no such measures have been reported with respect to the current system.

Response

  • In response, the Bush administration defended its activities, while neither specifically confirming or denying the existence of the potentially illegal program. According to the Deputy White House Press Secretary, "The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks."
  • Senator Arlen Specter claimed he would hold hearings with the telecommunications CEOs involved. The Senate Intelligence Committee was expected to question Air Force General Michael Hayden about the data-gathering during his confirmation hearings as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Hayden was in charge of the NSA from 1999 through 2005.
  • Commenting on the apparent incompatibility of the NSA call database with previous assurances by President Bush, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Fox News, "I'm not going to defend the indefensible. The Bush administration has an obligation to level with the American people... I don't think the way they've handled this can be defended by reasonable people." Later on Meet the Press, Gingrich stated that "everything that has been done is totally legal," and he said the NSA program was defending the indefensible, "because they refuse to come out front and talk about it."
  • Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News, "The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers, how does that fit into following the enemy?"
  • House Republican Caucus chairwoman Deborah Pryce said, "While I support aggressively tracking al-Qaida, the administration needs to answer some tough questions about the protection of our civil liberties."
  • Former Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner said, "I am concerned about what I read with regard to NSA databases of phone calls."
  • Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said "Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida? These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything.... Where does it stop?"
  • On May 15, 2006, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called for the FCC to open an inquiry into the lawfulness of the disclosure of America's phone records.
  • In May 2006, Pat Robertson called the NSA wire-tapping a "tool of oppression."
  • In May 2006, former majority leader Trent Lott stated "What are people worried about? What is the problem? Are you doing something you're not supposed to?"
  • On May 16, 2006, both Verizon and BellSouth stated not only did they not hand over records, but that they were never contacted by the NSA in the first place.
  • On June 30, 2006, Bloomberg reported the NSA "asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks," citing court papers filed June 23, 2006 by lawyers in McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc., 06cv3650, in the Southern District of New York.

    Internet monitoring

''Wired'' magazine

On May 22, 2006, it was revealed by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and Wired magazine that the program involved the NSA setting up splitters to the routing cores of many telecoms companies and to major Internet traffic hubs. These provided a direct connection via an alleged "black room" known as Room 641A. This room allows most U.S. telecoms communications and Internet traffic to be redirected to the NSA.
According to a security consultant who worked on the program, "What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records... they're providing total access to all the data," and a former senior intelligence official said, "This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order... the NSA is getting real-time actionable intelligence."

Partial retraction

On June 30, 2006 USA Today printed a partial retraction about its controversial article the prior month saying: "... USA TODAY also spoke again with the sources who had originally provided information about the scope and contents of the domestic calls database. All said the published report accurately reflected their knowledge and understanding of the NSA program, but none could document a contractual relationship between BellSouth or Verizon and the NSA, or that the companies turned over bulk calling records to the NSA. Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database..."

Denials

Five days after the story appeared, BellSouth officials said they could not find evidence of having handed over such records. "Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA," the officials said. USA Today replied that BellSouth officials had not denied the allegation when contacted the day before the story was published. Verizon has also asserted that it has not turned over such records.
Companies are permitted by US securities law ) to refrain from properly accounting for their use of assets in matters involving national security, when properly authorized by an agency or department head acting under authorization by the President of the United States. President Bush issued a presidential memorandum on May 5, 2006 delegating authority to make such a designation to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, just as the NSA call database scandal appeared in the media.