NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year, Audit Finds 312
NettiWelho writes "The Washington Post reports: 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 law 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."
3 frightening words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3 frightening words (Score:5, Funny)
But...but...President Obama and the NSA chief assured us that abuses don't happen and that there's plenty of oversight to stop them. So surely the Washington Post MUST be mistaken!
Re:3 frightening words (Score:4, Interesting)
"no abuse and plenty of oversight"
"the check is in the mail"
I'll respect you in the morning"
Need I go on ??? After all, they ARE from the Government, and here to help. . . .
Re:3 frightening words (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it time to say "We told you fuckers."?
Don't worry. The next time you see it coming because you understand this concept of a "track record" or have read a little history, you'll still be called a tin-foil hatter.
There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right?
This is actually how the average person perceives reality. Yes it's scary. It's why so little effort is put towards prevention.
Re:3 frightening words (Score:4, Interesting)
George Washington
Re:3 frightening words (Score:5, Informative)
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
It's not just government itself. The phenomenon I described above also explains why issues that should be factual/scientific are instead political. I'll give an example: marijuana is a Schedule I substance. Schedule I means "no medical use". Yet we have doctors prescribing it and patients using it who report relief of symptoms. We have lots of laws like this which directly contradict the available facts. It's because so many people aren't concerned with facts. They are concerned with their feelings, their fears, and with what offends them.
Re:3 frightening words (Score:5, Informative)
Schedule I drugs are not drugs with no medical use.
Schedule I drugs are drugs that a particular government organization has *decided* have no medical use. This isn't a scientific claim; it's a political one.
The most blatant example is heroin, which is Schedule I in the USA but used in much the same way as morphine in the UK.
Re:3 frightening words (Score:4, Interesting)
Ironically fear of abusers getting drugs guides things rather than legitimate, safe uses.
There are speed-like weight loss drugs that are safe and effective and used in many oyher countries. They are illegal in the US because addicts might illegally get ahold of them.
That's right. You can't get it because some addict might figure out a black market for it. I..e completely severed from your medical use.
Thanks for deciding that on our behalf. :( That our lives are worth less in legitimate use than an addict's through illegitimate.
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If you read my post, and parsed it according to the standard rules of English grammar, you'd realize that that was precisely what I was saying.
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Is it time to say "We told you fuckers."?
Don't worry. The next time you see it coming because you understand this concept of a "track record" or have read a little history, you'll still be called a tin-foil hatter. There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right? This is actually how the average person perceives reality. Yes it's scary. It's why so little effort is put towards prevention.
This is well said. I have offered to explain to people why I think what I think and have had them say, "If what you're saying is true, I don't want to know."
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This is well said. I have offered to explain to people why I think what I think and have had them say, "If what you're saying is true, I don't want to know."
Thank you. One definition of "psychotic" is "out of contact with reality". There are many psychotic people. In fact, I would venture that the majority of people in Western societies are psychotic. I believe forced ("public") schooling and mass media to be the two primary causes, with an almost hypnotic reverence for authority as an enabling factor.
There is a funny thing about compulsory education. Since ancient times, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, compulsory training was only for slaves. In
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I call it: Imperialist's New Clothes Syndrome.
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There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right?
Replace "government" with "religion", "corporations" (or "the free market"), "nation", "philosophy", "software development process".
What you're describing is simply a "true believer". They come in all sorts of flavors. Some of them get attached to governments.
The problem with having them involved in government is that I can't decide not to sit in the pews of, or do business with, or adhere to the government. Government is founded on two related things: force and threat of force. You can't just ignore those.
Re:3 frightening words (Score:5, Funny)
Is it time to say "We told you fuckers."?
I informed you thusly! I so informed you thusly.
Re: 3 frightening words (Score:5, Interesting)
2008? I didn't know Obama POTUS then.
Well...
If the 'Obama'-recession started in 2007, and the 'Obama'-phone program started in 1984, he must have been president in 2008!
2008, 2007, 1984 What party were those presidents from? Oh yeah, that 'less government' party that keeps giving us more government.
Don't listen to what politicians say to you, look at what they actually do. Democrats spend too much money and Republicans spend even more.
Re: 3 frightening words (Score:5, Informative)
Wow!
Moderated as a troll.
I re-read the comment and couldn't find one thing that was trollish. Extremely sarcastic, but not troll-ish.
Of course Obama is being blamed for executive orders given in 2008 (he didn't take office until January 2009), just as he is blamed for the 2007 recession (the so called 'Obama' recession), and just as he is blamed for the 1984 phone give away program (expanded from land lines to wireless in 2008*) the so-called 'Obama'-phones. It doesn't matter who did it or when it happens, for some people it will always be Obama's fault, just as for others everything wrong with the world from 2001 through 2008 was always Dick Cheney's fault.
Facts don't matter to some people if it disagrees with their opinions, they have their villians and must blame their villians for all wrongs. As others have pointed out above. This is exactly the kind of thinking that gets in the way of making informed choices for better government.
Its also probably why I was moderated 'troll'. I must have stepped on someone's precious opinions.
* By the way, Clinton increased the lifeline phone program in 1996 as well, so it isn't just the one party that gives us too much governement, sometimes the Democrats spend too much as well;)
Re:Cash for Clunkers? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is a government subsidized tradein for a new car destroying wealth? Seem more like aid in purchasing a capital good to me.
It wasn't the subsidy or the new car that destroyed capital, it was all the strings (like come attached to every government grant or subsidy). The "strings" in this case said that your trade-in, regardless of age or utility, had to be destroyed and crushed.
It even described how. First, you had to drain all the oil from the engine, add a sand/silica mixture to the cooling system, then you had to run the engine until it froze up. What was left of the car had to be crushed. This meant that not only were all those cars destroyed, but the ones left on the road are harder to find parts for because all the engine parts were destroyed and everything else was crushed. You can find lots of videos of engines being destroyed [youtube.com] on the interwebs.
The value in all those destroyed cars was far greater than anything that was created by the incentives. And in the long term it hurts the poorest the most, who need transportation for jobs and keep their cars longer and rely on older cars to be reasonable to buy.
Re: 3 frightening words (Score:5, Interesting)
1916 US troops occupy the Dominican Republic
1917 US enters WW1
1941 The US enters WW2
1950 The US Invades Korea
1961 US invades the Bay of Pigs
1965 US combat troops enter Vietnam
What party were those presidents from? Oh yeah, the peace loving party. What party was the only president to ever detonate nuclear bombs against another country from?
Republicans are hawks, Democrats enter us in some of the biggest wars.
Republicans are supposed to be for family values, but how many get caught in extramarital affairs?
Democrats want to help the minorities. But almost the entire party fought the civil rights movement.
Don't listen to what any politician says. I'm starting to think that more often than not they will do(or have done) the exact opposite of what they tell you.
Re: 3 frightening words (Score:5, Insightful)
But almost the entire party fought the civil rights movement.
There was an ideological transition that occurred because of this. Anyone against the civil rights movement fled the Democratic party, drawn to the Republicans by Nixon's Southern strategy of courting bible belt racists. It's disingenuous to apply contemporary labels across vast periods of history. Names and labels change. This is the same reason why it's fallacious for contemporary Republicans to claim to be the party of Lincoln. If Lincoln were alive today, it's not safe to say he'd be a Democrat, but he'd certainly NOT be a Republican.
I should note I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I vote Green Party.
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No - those southern democrats stayed southern democrats. They are dying off, but they did not flock en masse to another party. Senator Byrd is a great example of the ability of Democrats to look the other way when racism is in their own party.
Based on the fact that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, you are probably correct that he would be a democrat today.
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As a southerner, I can say from talking with my parents and others of their generation, as well as reading the historical data, yes they did flock en masse from the Democrats to the Republicans. While there was certainly a racist aspect for some (particularly in the 60s), there was also a moral aspect (a dominating factor after Roe v. Wade). A few Dems like Byrd did survive, but others made the switch like Sen. Strom Thurmond of my home state.
Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:2, Informative)
Last year there were 900-odd total including 195 FISA act violations and roughly 700 violations of executive orders.
Of the FISA act violations: they break it down further:
This
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:4, Informative)
The WP broke it down for you. 2776 cases includes incidence over 4 years. Last year there were 900-odd total including 195 FISA act violations and roughly 700 violations of executive orders. Of the FISA act violations: they break it down further:
This is not evidence of a vast conspiracy to deprive you of your rights. It's evidence of people failing to do things properly.
I figure to come up with that many errors, there must have been several thousand searches per year that were done as intended and according to the law. If they were always ignoring the law, that means the NSA would hardly be searching anything. If they were 99.9% in compliance, there would be about 900,000 searches to get about 900 errors. I think both of those scenarios are implausible. Nobody believes there are just a couple thousand searches per year and I doubt the NSA is good enough and careful enough to get 99.9% compliance. At the very limit of plausibility, they are not listening to all your phone calls.
My bad. Those 900 or so errors were for one quarter. The whole year is 2776, with 2012Q1 being the worst. Also, the trend is increasing.
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they keep spying on citizens of friendly countries on a frighteningly large scale, I wouldn't wonder that they got used to it and started spying on their own citizens as well. It's the whole mindset (spying on individuals) that has to be reviewed. In the past, governments used to spy on other governments, not on unsuspecting citizens. Now, they spy on everything they can get a tap on.
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Us citizens do not get a pass if we "accidentally" break the law. The NSA should not get one either. Plus their definition of "accidentally" is pretty lame and not really that far removed from intentional.
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:4, Funny)
Yep. Us citizens do not get a pass if we "accidentally" break the law. The NSA should not get one either. Plus their definition of "accidentally" is pretty lame and not really that far removed from intentional.
Occidental.. we meant to say all our spying was 'occidental'!!
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Define effective.
So far, even while "sacrificing privacy of X thousand citizens", and at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, the NSA and its counterparts have completely failed to predict or prevent everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to September 11 to the Boston bombers, in arenas both foreign and domestic.
Including failing to prevent Edward Snowden.
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please sheeple, the above is not that hard to understand what the intent was of this. The contortions of logic to justify FISA and the Patriot Act are ridiculous. Call, write, and go scream in person at your congress critter. We must have our republic back!
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And also only for the Washington area. From TFA:
It is a bit interesting that they got that information from "three government offic
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take a breath, get some perspective. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, in other words, my data is either in the hands of immoral or incompetent people.
Gee, I feel safer already.
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immoral AND incompetent people.
FTFY
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Over one year. That was the 2012 audit. What previous audits (if any) show, is not the subject of the article.
Note also that each case in question does NOT imply the violation of ONE person's privacy. From TFA: "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."
Which implies, if not a single instance that totalled 3000 Americans,
Percent of compliance is irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
I figure to come up with that many errors, there must have been several thousand searches per year that were done as intended and according to the law.
This is a secret program and the only thing you can be sure of is that your do NOT have all the facts. This is an agency and a program that has NO accountability to the electorate. They operate in secret, their findings are secret, their actions on those findings are secret, their oversight is toothless and secret, and we can't even fight against the program because we cannot prove we were harmed and thus can't prove standing in front of a judge. Exactly how stupid do you have to be to think that the NSA is to be trusted unconditionally based on a tiny bit of leaked information?
If they were 99.9% in compliance, there would be about 900,000 searches to get about 900 errors.
Even if they were 100% in compliance it STILL would be a violation of our 4th amendment rights. The NSA's actions have never come under serious judicial review. The FISA court is a rubber stamp fig leaf of a justification. You can loudly proclaim that this program is "legal" all you want but that doesn't make it so nor does it make it right. Jim Crow laws once were "legal" but they still were wrong and ultimately unconstitutional. Furthermore even if we take your 900 number at face value (and in reality I do not) that is 900 people who were unlawfully deprived of their civil rights in some manner. Even one is too many.
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You have the right to shut up! Unless of course we want to know something from you that we can't get otherwise.
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broad new powers
Let me add two more words: "Went beyond".
Well finally (Score:5, Funny)
Now congress HAS to do something about it!
Re:Well finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Now congress HAS to do something about it!
Yeah. They're going to increase the NSA budget so they can implement an internal office of surveillance review or something like that.
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Re:Well finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, they're on it! I'm sure they've already got broad bipartisan support for passing a bill imposing harsher penalties on leakers and countries who shelter them.
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they'll make these audits illegal!
yeah...
Re:Well finally (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad congress doesn't plan nuclear plants. Their solution for a warning light popping up would certainly be to remove the bulb.
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Like what? Change the laws that they aren't obeying so they disobey even more?
That's...brilliant.
They usually do the opposite.
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so basically, what we knew (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank God Snowden exposed the NSA programs so that now they are finally being scrutinized.
The question left is, what are we(the people) going to do about it?
I vote for dissolving the NSA and DoHS.
Re:so basically, what we knew (Score:5, Insightful)
The question left is, what are we(the people) going to do about it?
Next time, they'll vote for Kodos instead.
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Not yet, not yet. Give it time, the USSR wasn't built over night either.
Re:so basically, what we knew (Score:5, Insightful)
We (the people) gave them a little power, and they grossly over stepped the bounds.
I don't think it is useful to exaggerate. We don't have any evidence (yet) of malicious intent - almost all of the stuff in this report was just sloppiness because nobody was there to keep them in line. It isn't like they were digging up dirt on political candidates in order to sway elections or blackmailing the leaders of the Occupy movement to make them back off.
On the flip-side it is useful to note that this was an internal report - pretty much guaranteed not to turn up anything heinous because that would be career suicide for the investigators who report to the same command-structure they are investigating. So the relatively benign level of abuse is not proof that really bad shit has not happened, it just wouldn't be in this report if it did happen.
Re:so basically, what we knew (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't like they were digging up dirt on political candidates in order to sway elections or blackmailing the leaders of the Occupy movement to make them back off.
no but we DO know that the IRS was abusing political opponants, damn near everything that we have been told has been a lie since obama took office (and before he did to be clear) I dont know how you or anyone can still say things like "well we dont know...." we know enough to know they lied, about ALOT. I feel that we have only just begun to find the truth in this administration.
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Re:so basically, what we knew (Score:4, Insightful)
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How often do you think abuse is required to maintain the status quo of those in power? Hardly ever, and when it does happen it won't leave much of a paper trail, if any.
Here's something for NSA employees to think about. The Snowden leaks have made that entire org collectively shit its pants in fear. So who do you think that vast spying apparatus is now being turned on? I bet every single NSA employee that has clearance to so much as make a cup of coffee is
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I second this. But admittedly, that's only a small start of all the parts of our government that ought to be dissolved.
Re:so basically, what we knew (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans seem too easily distracted to really do much more than complain.
Habeas corpus? Gone. Being spied on in clear violation of the 4th Amendment? No problem. Invade and occupy a country that had nothing to do with the events of 911? Bring it on. Grant China entry to the WTO, and in the end, loose millions of American job to the PRC? Hey, that's just "business."
It doesn't really matter if the Man In Office is Baby Bush, the Blue Dress Stainer, or Obama. In-action on the part of We The People tells the people in power everything they ever wanted to hear. They can get way with anything and no meaningful action against them will be taken. Never.
The question left is, what are we(the people) going to do about it?
It is a very serious question. At what point do westerners say enough is enough and overthrow governments, or at the very least hold people accountable and arrest them?
SURPRISE! (Score:3, Interesting)
I would like to meet someone (adult) that's surprised by these news.
I would like to know his answer to the question: "At which point in human history and in which location has a government not spied on its own citizens?".
I often wonder if people understand what "secret" means.
Re:SURPRISE! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SURPRISE! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they will. For a very simple reason, they have more pressing problems. They have a recession to deal with, many are busy trying to make ends meet or at least get by somehow. People don't tend to care about freedom a lot if food&shelter are on their "to be worried about" list.
Why do you think we do everything to prolong that recession for as long as we possibly can? Think back to the 60s and realize what happens when people have time to worry about a crappy government.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Score:5, Interesting)
Brazil (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, that is a nice one! Best part is the bureaucrat-speak they cover it in. The fascinating thing is that such a scenario seems to be more and more plausible.
Quote from the story (Score:2)
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Oh, I thought it was something different: "It looks like we got caught spying on a couple thousand Americans illegally, but if you compare how many times we were caught to how many times we committed the crime, that's a drop in the bucket."
It's similar to how Goldman Sachs is absolutely devastated when they have to pay a $500 million fine with no admission of wrongdoing - it takes them a full 3 days to get that money back.
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Except when they say a single violation was using Washington DC rather than Egypt. That does not necessarily imply that it was a single unique number that was analyzed. If they say were using a broad term against 202 err.. then they spied potentially on tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals privacy and data. Say they scanned for the term NSA or Secret Intelligence etc... This is why you don't give the government this much power.
Sneakernet (Score:2, Insightful)
Time to go back to "sneakernet" and face-to-face communications. Since we now know that even encrypting your data may not be a fool-proof way to secure our communications from prying governement/corporatocracy eyes.
We might as well shred the Constitution and start over again. Our governement "by the people and for the people" doesn't abide by it anyway. :-(
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Step one (shred the Constitution) is a fait accompli.
Let's get busy on Step Two.
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Step Three: Profit!
Breaking down the penalty (Score:5, Interesting)
2776 for one year = 27,760,000 USD fines. Although this sort of mass scale violation should be considered a larger crime.
2776 with five years per violation is 13,880 years of jail time.
However consider more closely that these errors likely affect thousands to tens or even hundreds of thousands citizens privacy. instead of looking at all information from Egypt they looked at all of the communications for Washington DC. Extrapolating those numbers out to the reality of how much private information and how many people were illegally spied upon by the NSA and you can safely say this would bankrupt the executive branch pretty quickly.
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Is your data copyrighted?
Then why do you think your privacy is by any stretch as important as Miley Cyrus' croaking?
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Um, when a government agency pays a fine, who do you think picks up the tab? And who are they paying the fine to?
I can see it now: "Due to an unexpected increase in revenue of 27,760,000 dollars, the NSA budget has been increased."
"Broke the rules"? (Score:2)
Broke the rules? Overstepped its legal authority?
Is that the euphemism we're using now for "broke the law"?
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Silly. Don't you know that when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal?
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Only if she swallows properly and doesn't make a mess on a dress.
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Wrong president. At least as far as we know.
--Richard M. Nixon, 19 May 1977 TV interview with David Frost [youtube.com]
One Good Federal Prosecutor (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, all it took was one honest U.S. Attorney to see something like this and get a grand jury to indict the culpable officials, acting independently of corruption from above. Hell, a good lawyer could probably make a grand jury case for a RICO indictment against the whole administration.
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Don't forget to thank (Score:2)
Two other groups that need to be thanked for all of this is the DoJ and the journalists. If the DoJ hadn't had gone and obtained the phone records of some journalists this would have probably been quietly brushed aside. You know cause the journalists don't want to get shut out but now all bets are off and the news agencies are happy to report on things that effect them.
clever (Score:5, Insightful)
The findings conveniently move the goalposts - it implies that the issue is that the spying is being done incorrectly, not that it's being done at all; if it were done "correctly" we would never know, which was the NSA's original win condition.
Yep. We're fucked.
So what? They didn't break Copyright! (Score:2)
We're the Fed... (Score:2)
Are Congress, Supreme Court, POTUS on that list? (Score:2)
And do they think it's mere coincidence that the current president of Russia used to be the head of the KGB?
One article I actually read, and now wish I hadn't (Score:5, Informative)
A few interesting tidbits to share...
1) The documents reports 2776 violations of American privacy in just the 12 months ending in May 2012. Oh, and that's only for their Fort Meade data center and a few others in D.C. area, rather than for all of their data centers across the U.S.. They acknowledge the number would be significantly higher if it included all of them. Oh, and those are the number of incidents that occurred, not the number of Americans who were violated in each incident, which is actually a much higher number but isn't reported.
2) They quadrupled their oversight staff after a series of significant violations in 2009. And the results? Between 2011 and 2012, the number of infractions nearly doubled. Not halved, doubled.
3) They accidentally collected a "large number" of calls for people in Washington D.C. when there was a mixup between the international code for Egypt (20) and the area code for D.C. (202). No disclosure on what they meant by "large number", but considering the severity of other infractions, it has to be pretty large.
4) They didn't report the Egypt/D.C. mixup to the organization that oversees/audits them, nor to Congress or anyone else outside the agency, because it was deemed irrelevant to any of them. It was deemed irrelevant since "there were no defects to report", to quote a March 2013 report on the issue.
5) "Incidental" information on Americans that is collected when targeting foreigners is regularly allowed to enter their database and is freely searchable from then on. They don't count these as violations, nor do they report them, and they are apparently pervasive under their current way of doing things.
6) In one violation, they hijacked a fiber line going through the U.S. and temporarily held onto all data going through it so that they could process it. This went on for several months before the FISC ruled that what they were doing was a violation of the 4th Amendment since they were incapable of filtering out the communication of American citizens. FOIA requests have been submitted for the ruling, but the Obama administration is apparently working to block the requests.
Geez. After reading something like this, I can see why no one around here reads the articles. They're way too depressing.
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Funny, I can't. It does not mention citizens vs. not. It simply says "The right of the People". Weird.
And the declaration of independence specifically says "all men". Granted, women and black people don't count on that one, we had to fix that later. Sigh. Yes, I know the Declaration is NOT the constitution.
Point is, this whole thing about the laws not counting against non americans is Crap.
TD
I declare this day... (Score:3)
So they roll out features before court approval (Score:3)
So clearly they roll out their spy system features without seeking FISA court approval.
I guess you can wipe your ass with the Constitution for all it's worth nowadays. :(
Still, over time I've learned that all the NSA monitors are emails entering and leaving the US. That still concerns me because SaskTel leases server space in Florida, which means all my emails are being scanned, even though I'm a Canadian.
I really wouldn't care if they weren't scanning my emails. I'd just snigger and laugh as the poor dumb 'mericans tromp on down the road to a full scale police state.
The sad thing is that is what's happening, and the citizens of the US largely don't give a shit. What a pity they don't even remember what "freedom" means. It's barely been a decade since 9/11 and the majority has been brainwashed into thinking this type of spy system is the way things have always been.
The only important question at this point... (Score:3)
The only important question at this point is 'who is actually in charge of this situation'?
Note these...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130816/01174524199/simple-question-how-could-president-obama-not-know-that-inspector-generals-report-proving-him-liar-was-leaked-as-well.shtml [techdirt.com]
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130816/02462124204/how-could-dianne-feinstein-not-have-seen-report-laying-out-nsa-abuses.shtml [techdirt.com]
Both Obama and Feinstein are making themselves look STUPID, and that's not something politicians ever willingly elect to do. Now it is certainly possible that the press is capable of outmaneuvering politicians, but odds alone would dictate a different result eventually. But at every step along this garden path the figureheads have done and said the exact opposite thing as they should be doing or saying.
It's as if this is scripted. That worries me.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they violated the law, lock them up.
Then again, they probably have enough blackmail on the congress critters to keep their program hush hush.
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt that. If the scandal continues to grow, as it looks likely to, these people will not have a lot to add to what is already known.
No, the main hurdles to neutering or disbanding the NSA are the strategic goals it serves, namely profiling of the population down to individual level, the intended chilling effects that come with blanket surveillance, and possibly a critical supporting role in establishing a totalitarian system. Being able to get rid of "undesirables" by tipping of law-enforcement (and these days it is almost impossible not to do something illegal when being online in the US) is also highly desirable. In addition, results from economic espionage must pay for a significant part of its operational budget.
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I cannot. By the very definition of trust and trustworthy I cannot.
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Plus they have the luxury of saying: This was a mistake done by an employee of a third party company. There is no federal crime it is a corporate mistake.
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So... we'll be getting a few free downloads as compensation and they have to say they won't do it again?
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We already know the answers but the important question you forgot to ask is how will the current administration handle this? Or course we know that answer too with the appointment of James Clapper to conduct the independent review of the NSA. It's pretty clear that poor decision making is still occuring to this day.
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'cause I don't give a shit about what dimwits say.
Seriously, that guy is more whack than Wheelchair-Goebbels ever was.
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Really?
They range from significant violations of law [...]
a single “incident” in February 2012 involved the unlawful retention of 3,032 files
But the more serious lapses include [...] the use of automated systems without built-in safeguards to prevent unlawful surveillance.
The court ruled it unconstitutional.
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the collection effort was unconstitutional. The court said that the methods used were “deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds,”
I pulled all of those from the Washington Post's article.
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I'm more shocked that it's met with a collective shrugging of shoulders and as much as a "tsk" uttered by those that SHOULD react to it.