This deserves special attention:
(illustration: Dailydot)
ALSO SEE: NSA Releases Spy Reports on Xmas Eve
Holiday Document Carpet-Bombing
26 December 14
here are holiday document dumps and there are holiday document dumps. And then there is holiday document carpet-bombing from 30,000 feet.
The heavily-redacted reports include examples of data on Americans being e-mailed to unauthorized recipients, stored in unsecured computers and retained after it was supposed to be destroyed, according to the documents. They were posted on the NSA's website at around 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. In a 2012 case, for example, an NSA analyst "searched her spouse's personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting," according to one report. The analyst "has been advised to cease her activities," it said.
"Advised to cease her activities" is nice. Why isn't this person being advised that her bail is $50,000, cash or bond?
Even heavily redacted -- For which, please read, "Apparently splattered with hot tar before release" -- this latest missive from the puzzle palace is another item for the bill of particulars on which the NSA, and the courageous but curiously error-prone heroes who work there -- should be arraigned in the public mind.
Other unauthorized cases were a matter of human error, not intentional misconduct. Last year, an analyst "mistakenly requested" surveillance "of his own personal identifier instead of the selector associated with a foreign intelligence target," according to another report.
Assuming we believe that anything the NSA says about its spying is the truth, and I don't any more, pleading incompetence is just as unacceptable as pleading guilty. Theses aren't some idiots from the Bureau Of Mines getting drunk at the Christmas party and humping on the office copier. (Blogs never forget.) This is a bunch of meatheads who can seriously fck with the lives of Americans with just a few keystrokes. And the weaselspeak doesn't help, either.
In 2012, an analyst conducted surveillance "on a U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization because the analyst incorrectly believed that he was authorized to query due to a potential threat," according to the fourth-quarter report from 2012. The surveillance yielded nothing.
What's the "organization" in question? It would seem to have a cause of action here. Of course, we probably can't know what it was or else the terrorists will slaughter us as we sleep, or Australia and Indonesia will go to war, or something.
After foreign intelligence is acquired, "it must be analyzed to remove or mask certain protected categories of information, including U.S. person information, unless specific exceptions apply," the NSA said in a statement before posting the documents. The extent of that collection has never been clear. The agency said today it has multiple layers of checks in place to prevent further errors in intelligence gathering and retention. "The vast majority of compliance incidents involve unintentional technical or human error," NSA said in its executive summary. "NSA goes to great lengths to ensure compliance with the Constitution, laws and regulations."
Which is why, I suppose, these heavily redacted documents dropped on Christmas freaking Eve. Great lengths, indeed.
No, gang. You don't get gold stars for "transparency" here. You don't get gold stars for having paper policies in place with which your actual personnel are too arrogant to comply, or which your actual personnel are too stupid to understand. You don't get gold stars for advising the office gossip to cease the activities regarding spying on her spouse. What you get, or what you ought to get, is congressional oversight that squeezes you to within an inch of your life. And for those who attempt to separate the ACLU's formal request from Edward Snowden's whistleblowing, forget it. You might as well try to separate the Boston Tea Party from the Second Continental Congress.
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