Late 1999: NSA Begins ‘Trailblazer’ Data Mining Program

NSA servers used to collect and sift data. [Source: FrancesFarmersRevenge.com]The National Security Agency (see 1952) begins building a massive data-mining system, code-named “Trailblazer,” that is intended to sift through reams of digital communications intercepts and find nuggets of information relevant to national security. The program’s task is huge—to sort through the 2 million bits of data the NSA collects every hour, and one made even more complex by the relatively new types of wireless, Internet, cell phone, and instant messaging communications now becoming ever more commonplace. Trailblazer is strongly embraced by General Michael Hayden, who became the NSA’s director in March 1999. Hayden recognizes from the outset that the NSA is years behind the technological curve, and casts Trailblazer as the future of the agency’s intelligence gathering and sorting. In November 1999, Hayden makes Trailblazer the centerpiece of his “100 Days of Change,” his plan to transform the agency into a leaner, more efficient organization, fast-tracking the program to vault it ahead of other initiatives. “It was going to structure us to handle the digital revolution,” a former intelligence official will recall. A meeting between NSA and other government officials in December 1999 is not promising; the program “kicked off with not a real great definition of what it was trying to achieve,”] a government oversight official will recall. But from the outset the program had problems: a meeting between NSA and other government officials in December 1999 was not promising, and, according to one government oversight official, the program “kicked off with not a real great definition of what it was trying to achieve.” Program managers failed to define standard data formats to allow for the proper sorting of information. After six years, $1.2 billion in expenditures, and endless man-hours of work, the utterly failed program will be recognized as the “biggest boondoggle…in the intelligence community” (see January 2006) [Baltimore Sun, 1/29/2006]