Unmerry Xmas Eve - NSA Reveals Damning Self-Audit In an extremely conspicuous move, the NSA chose Christmas Eve to release an internal review of the times the agency caught employees spying on Americans. The report is a collection of documents, heavily redacted, arranged by quarter, and ranging from the end of 2001 to the end of 2012. They largely catalog individual instances where a National Security Agency employee illegally or mistakenly used the agency’s powerful technology to search an American or a foreigner in the U.S. without a warrant, was caught, reprimanded, and the information deleted. It’s been more than a year and a half since former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked agency documents to journalists—the public has learned of its astounding technological power, like tapping into raw Internet data or collecting the phone calls of entire countries. But so far, the agency has insisted that it doesn’t actually collect the content of Americans’ communications without a warrant or court order, which would be illegal. That’s distinct from metadata, like call times, of Americans’ phone calls, which, as Snowden revealed, the agency has collected for years. Though inadvertent collection of Americans’ information does occasionally happen, the NSA has long stated, it takes immediate steps to delete the information and reprimand the agent responsible. One bit of apparently new information in this report is that in the panicked week after 9/11—which would indeed prompt the NSA to acquire unprecedented legal authorization—a false rumor swept the agency that it was about to declare a sort of temporary martial law. Agents could wantonly look at much more information than they were authorized to, as the rumor went (more at link) https://popularresistance.org/nsa-waited-until-christmas-eve-to-reveal-its-embarrassing-self-audit/
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:43:48 +0000
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