Lies, Damned Lies, And The NSA Today the Washington Post reported documents demonstrating that the NSA breaks privacy laws “thousands of times” each year. Consider this the conclusion of what was the last-ditch argument put forth to defend the NSA: Yes, they have the capability to abrogate your Constitutional rights, but there is no evidence of abuse! Wrong. We now have proof that the NSA both wittingly, and unwittingly breaks that law on average of 7.6 times per day, using leaked 2012 numbers. That’s a nontrivial number of infractions. Let’s tease our way through the path to today. The story broke that the NSA collected metadata on phone records of Americans. This proved James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, a liar to more than the American people, but also to its Congress. Leaker Edward Snowden then said that, with a mere email address, he could access the content of that account. He was mocked by Rep. Mike Rogers, who said that Snowden “was lying. [...] It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.” But then news of the XKeyscore program came out. And former NSA Director General Hayden confirmed its existence. Oops. The President said that no abuse was ongoing: What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC. Well, that’s not true either. The Post’s report is utterly damning. A few excerpts for flavor: They [infractions that broke the law] range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls. [...] In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. [...] Despite the quadrupling of the NSA’s oversight staff after a series of significant violations in 2009, the rate of infractions increased throughout 2011 and early 2012. [...] James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that the court found the NSA in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Obama administration has fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit that seeks the opinion. Generally, the NSA reveals nothing in public about its errors and infractions. It gets worse. The Post spoke to members of the government close to bit.ly/1bC28CX tcrn.ch/144405V Source: TechCrunch
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 06:44:32 +0000
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