The bad news? Among the tens of thousands of annual NSA improper surveillance incidents are a handful of violations that the agency now admits were executed intentionally. The
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The National Security Agency said Friday that some of its analysts knowingly and deliberately exceeded its surveillance authority on occasion over the past decade and that those involved were disciplined. "Very rare instances of willful violations of NSA's authorities have been found," the agency said in a statement. It said none of the abuses involved violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or the USA Patriot Act. NSA violations of both laws have been highlighted in the leaks of classified information by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden. Two U.S. officials said one analyst was disciplined in years past for using NSA resources to track a former spouse. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.According to Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, the deliberate abuses have come at an average clip of only one per year -- at least among the documented cases. The agency says it takes a "zero tolerance" approach in handling these incidents, although the nature of the sanctions imposed on violators remains hazy. The Senate panel was briefed on the rare cases of purposefully illegal surveillance last week; Feinstein says she initially learned of the NSA violations through the media. According to the
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National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said. The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT. Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying. The “LOVEINT” examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees, officials said. In the wake of revelations last week that NSA had violated privacy rules on nearly 3,000 occasions in a one-year period, NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong emphasized in a conference call with reporters last week that those errors were unintentional. He did say that there have been “a couple” of willful violations in the past decade. He said he didn’t have the exact figures at the moment.So unless you're the estranged spouse or schoolyard crush of an NSA agent, you're probably fine. Terrific. The obvious concern here is that these enormous snooping powers could potentially be harnessed by a government employee -- or, frankly, a government apparatus -- with more wide-ranging and sinister intentions. This underscores the importance of safeguards to ensure strong oversight. Episodes
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