Audit: NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year - Can we stop the bullshit denials now?

[bigtree]

from the WaPo:


NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

. . . The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.


read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

NSA Statements to the Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-statements-to-the-post/2013/08/15/f40dd2c4-05d6-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. "Can we stop the bullshit denials now?"

Short answer: No.

We'll be instructed that these were harmless, unintentional oversights of the innocent variety and we're all about of fainting, hand-wring, pearl-clutchers of the folliclely enflamed sort and any complaints are just an effort to abet racists who hate Obama so we must be racists too.

[bigtree]

2. those people cannot be taken seriously on this issue anymore

. . . if they're making excuses for these violations.

[snooper2]

4. You got the doc, typographical errors, human error, roaming cell phones from Uganda

sounds pretty benign to me-

You want the NSA to shut it's doors?


Can we get the people who scream, "they listenin' to me phone calls ma!" to shutup now?

[AzDar]

3. It's still quite astonishing to me that people on DU were defending this shit.

Un-Freaking-Believable.

[ucrdem]

5. This is kind of like finding an obscure system log on your laptop.

OMG, look at all those system errors! Hundreds! I had no idea!

[Marr]

7. It's nothing at all like that. /nt

[ucrdem]

8. Don't you find the existence of such a document kind of heartening?

Who knew there was an EO 12333, and who knew the NSA was dutifully complying with it?



Seriously, did you ever hear of such an audit while Bush and Cheney were stealing us blind?

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. "broke rules" is weasel term for " violated Constitutional rights"

A right is something that you possess on an inherent basis.
A privilege is something that someone else possesses and can give to you if they so wish.

The 4th Amendment declares we have a right to be secure in our property, papers, effects and similar.