[liberationtech] NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests | Techdirt

[coderman@gmail.com (coderman)]

LOVEINT!!!

oh god this alone makes it all worth it,,, thank you Snowden!

P.S. setup a bitcoin donation address.

best regards,




On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:21 PM, Yosem Companys <companys@stanford.edu> wrote:
> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130823/18432024301/nsa-admits-okay-okay-there-have-been-bunch-intentional-abuses-including-spying-loved-ones.shtml
>
> NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses,
> Including Spying On Love Interests
>
> from the and-we're-just-now-telling-congress dept
>
> So, this week, we wrote about the NSA quietly admitting that there had been
> intentional abusesof its surveillance infrastructure, despite earlier claims
> by NSA boss Keith Alexander and various folks in Congress that there had
> been absolutely no "intentional" abuses. Late on Friday (of course) the NSA
> finally put out an official statement admitting to an average of one
> intentional abuser per year over the past ten years. The AP is reporting
> that at least one of the abuses involved an NSA employee spying on a former
> spouse. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal suggests that spying on love
> interests happens somewhat more often:
>
> The practice isnâ??t frequent â?? one official estimated a handful of cases in
> the last decade â?? but itâ??s common enough to garner its own spycraft label:
> LOVEINT.
>
> A handful is still significantly more than once. And it's a lot more than
> the "zero" times we'd been told about repeatedly by defenders of the
> program.
>
> While the NSA says it takes these abuses seriously, there's no indication
> that the analyst was fired.
>
> Much more troubling is that it appears that the NSA only told its oversight
> committee in the Senate about all of this a few days ago:
>
> The Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed this week on the willful
> violations by the NSA's inspector general's office, as first reported by
> Bloomberg.
>
> "The committee has learned that in isolated cases over the past decade, a
> very small number of NSA personnel have violated NSA procedures â?? in roughly
> one case per year," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who
> chairs the committee, said in a statement Friday.
>
> Of course, this is the same Dianne Feinstein who, exactly a week ago, said
> the following:
>
> As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in
> which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance
> for inappropriate purposes.
>
> Yeah. Because apparently the NSA chose not to tell the committee until a few
> days later, despite it happening for years.
>
> And, of course, they release this all on a Friday night, hoping that it'll
> avoid the news cycle...
>
> In the meantime, the NSA just made Senator Feinstein look like a complete
> fool. She's been its strongest defender in Congress for years, and has stood
> up for it time and time again, despite all of this questionable activity.
> Then, last week, it lets her tell lies about it without telling her
> beforehand that there had been such abuses. At this point, it's abundantly
> clear that Feinstein's "oversight" of the NSA is a joke. She's either
> incompetent or lying. Either way, it appears that the NSA is running circles
> around her, and isn't subject to any real Congressional oversight. At some
> point, you'd think that maybe she'd stop defending it and actually start
> doing her job when it comes to oversight. You'd think the fact that it let
> her make a complete fool of herself by claiming there had been no
> intentional abuses should make Feinstein realize that the NSA situation is
> out of control. But, tragically, this seems unlikely. Even her statement
> seems to want to minimize the seriousness of the fact that she -- the person
> in charge of oversight -- was completely kept in the dark about very serious
> intentional abuses. Senator Feinstein just got hung out to dry by the NSA.
> You'd think she'd stop going to bat for it and its lies.
>
> Either way, we've now gone from General Keith Alexander and Feinstein
> claiming "no abuses," to them saying no "intentional" abuses, to this latest
> admission of plenty of intentional abuses, including spying on lovers.
> Perhaps, instead of lying, it's time for the NSA to come clean and to get
> some real oversight.
>
>
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