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NSA Reveals More Than a Decade of Improper Surveillance
An anonymous reader writes: On Christmas Eve, the NSA quietly dropped 12 years worth of internal reports on surveillance that may have broken laws, including reports that were illegally withheld and the subject of a FOIA lawsuit in 2009. "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. ... 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 (PDF). The analyst 'has been advised to cease her activities,' it said. 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." Here's there list of reports going back to 2001.
This is gonna make cold fjord's head explode. He'll have to work overtime in this thread doing his damage control shilling.
They're spying on themselves and they STILL don't seem to think they've lost control?
Well at least they're being thorough...
There's been a lot of complaints about the NSA but you must admit this is one of the best, most *redacted* news we've heard in recent years. It's proof that the system works. When Obama promised *redacted* we thought he wouldn't actually follow through but here we have many reports allowing us, as good citizens, to make better voting choices.
The NSA is a good start but let's keep the pressure on. Agencies like *redacted* need a good housecleaning as well.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
This has got to be some of the laziest trolling ever.
It's true though, the Republicans who demand that this continue are big government liberals. Their only excuse is that they claim they'll use these powers the "right" way i.e. IRS investigations of liberal institutions instead of conservative ones and investigations into hookup apps to make sure you are only having government-approved sex and the porn you watch to make sure you are only fapping to government-approved material.
Authoritarians have infiltrated both the Republican and Democratic parties, emphasizing different aspects to allow them to feign a tug-of-war. To try and blame a single party is to ignore the underlying problem.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
were authorised and official policy and hence no investigation required as they were not a breach!
It's a step in the right direction for sure.
Kudos America!
How many other countries actually does this??
Takes ten years to release, then they are redacted into oblivion, that's one way to prevent any proper scrutiny of your operations. Far too many coups have been performed, which ended up exploding in your faces, because these sort of schemes are dreamt up by some senior military figure and covered up in this manner. Even with the best of intentions, America has screwed up far too many countries like this.
Anyone? Hello?
Like any organization public or private they will do whatever they can get away with, and in this case they can get away with anything. The checks and balances don't work anymore because elected officials themselves just ignore them and on election day all we have to vote for are more people just like them.
Firstly this is the tip of the iceberg, secondly what happens when NSA staff and their agents run for public office? General Alexander looked like he was going for a presidential run when he did his tour promoting himself just before retirement. He could have been President and had access to a lot of surveillance data on competing candidates and opponents. (Note, the CTO of the NSA does consultancy for General Alexanders company, and this is an insane conflict of interest that has not been addressed, he continues to have links to his former work colleges despite retiring! Their loyalty to him should not trump their legal duty to the democracy).
Even lower level NSA staff and their allies will move into politics a more subtle shift but one that over time will turn USA into a dictatorship. If you want to see what that looks like, take a look at Russia and ex-KGB man Putin. He became President, and used his KGB links to ensure he stays that way.
There's a damn good reason why we don't spy on our own. Ity undermines your democracy, and its why agencies like GCHQ are supposed to protect the privacy of Brits, not spy on Brits and hand that data to a foreign power.
I see UKIP is having a lot of their telephone calls leaked, the most damning ones taken out of context, handy that. How many calls were listened to by GCHQ/NSA, recorded, and filtered to find the ones with political advantage? How many calls did you GCHQ, intercept on behalf of a foreign power that are now being used to undermine the UK political system? You f*ing traitors.
Humans are egotistical, oppressive, homicidal maniacs so whats new. Everybody talking about NSA spying but what about Federal and State civil forfeiture laws where our government(especially the local and state police) pretty much steals(money, electronics, automobiles, homes) outright from the citizens without being charged of any crime especially on the highways, 4th amendment pretty much gone. Civil and supreme court always sides with law enforcement and you pretty much piss away thousands of dollars more on lawyers and achieve nothing.
We are no better than the rest of the world or any fascist states before and after. USA like so many other countries have always oppressed their citizens from race to gender and it's always gonna be this way. It does not matter what bullshit ideology(Law, religion,atheism) you believe in because in the end humans are humans and none of that ideology which is really "wolf in sheep's" clothing will change Human nature.
This reminds a Christmas eve confession of a 13 year old boy. Admit small mistakes, hoping that no one will notice that the boy not only is a bastard, but was not even baptized.
I couldn't agree with this comment any more.
Got bad news for you - this is the norm.
You don't spend gobs of money and time running for office if you don't want to tell people what to do.
You may tell yourself that telling them what to do is "for their own good", but it's really about the rush you get when large numbers of people do what you say.
In other words, there is no "infiltrate", there is only "that's the whole point of politics"....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Did you catch it?
That’s rightwomen can abuse your data, too!
It’s not just pimple faced teenagers who are out to hack youit could be your ex-wife!
Less than 100 comments on this /. posting so far, and the signal-to-noise ratio is as low as ever..
The older I get, the more cynical, apparently. In my opinion, this is just the NSA throwing the U.S. populace a bone for Christmas. Is this redacted stuff they tossed us for real? Yes. Is it just the tiniest ice crystal from the tip of the Titantic-sinking-class iceberg? Hell, yes it is. They wouldn't dare show us the really bad stuff, which is probably closer to what The Machine (and more to the point, the other machine, 'Samaritan') from the TV show Person of Interest collects on everyone on a moment-by-moment basis, and they'd rather lose an eye than show us the really incriminating stuff; this is just meant as a distraction.
We're headed for a Federal meltdown, I think. No worries, it won't be some shooting war like you'd see in the movies, where a small but determined underground army rises up to topple the corrupt, rotting-from-within government, it'll be a slow burn, with lots of talking, and papers shuffled around, and finally, at the very end, something involving men with guns, and it probably won't happen in what's left of my lifetime, but I think it's going to happen. Call it reform, to put an appropriately pretty and benign word to it. But when it finally happens, nothing will be the same ever again, and Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and all the rest will turn over in their graves. Of course there's a still a small spark within me that believes that the system those men put in place so long ago will self-correct and prevent everything from completely falling apart. We'll see, I guess.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
"Don't do that or we'll make frowny faces at you. And also, what did you find out?"
the high and mighty keep doing evil shit until they start landing on the bottom bunk under Bubba in an overcrowded jail.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
the GOP stopped Congressional oversight of NSA back in 2004. They knew that what was going on was illegal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Really? I found it to be an accurate assessment of one of the major problems with the US; both Democrats and Republicans are more interested in expanding the power of the Federal Government than in holding government accountable for abuses.
Democrats hate the thought of anyone determining their own fate and Republicans want to prevent anyone from enjoying the same advantages they do. Both Parties have become useless to the majority and only serve specific, rabidly vocal special interest groups.
Good thing i've never mistakenly typed a muscle-memory data item like my email address or something into a web form because it was confusing. And the fact that 'personal identifier' is used probably means they typed their own user id into some field and hit enter. Even after reading more instances from the links, it is quite obvious that this item is chosen for the summary because it sounds terrible.
Take out all of the actual human mistakes, the date errors that snowballed from human mistakes, and the mistakes made by humans in judgement (where not malicious) and I think you'll see a pattern of _HUMAN ERROR_ in the intelligence process that is run by HUMANS.
Haphazardly (so note, these numbers don't actually mean anything) I would guess that for every 1 truly malicious abuse (and let's use a really wide-ranged net for defining malicious even to include grumpy people) there are 9999 mistakes that are reported and handled internally. The fact that they admit these small mistakes and include them in reports that go up to congress (albeit internally) is a good measure that intel is not being done by dr. evil.
No one wants 1984, not even the people who work at these places because they are people too.
Insightful.
It's probably a form of the same sociopathy/psychopathy which is prevalent amongst big-company CEOs that motivates people to seek out positions where they can tell others what to do.
Sure, there's a need for bosses in some cases, but deliberately seeking that out, where the objective is to be able to order people around rather than accomplish a specific goal, has to be some kind of mental illness or atavistic throwback.
The oversight committees are still at work - as the stories about their failing in their job and Alexander's perjury before one of them suggests. So what are you suggesting - or are you just being gratuitously partisan?
...anyone who gets themselves elected president, should on no account be allowed to do their job... leading to best rulers are the ones who don't want the job or aren't aware of the fact that they're rulers.
I don't know that it's a mental illness per se, but it definitely shares characteristics with narcissistic personality disorder.
That said, as far as modern psychology goes, it's kind of like Apple's app store - there's a diagnosis for everyone.
I'm pretty sure the penalty for treason is execution.
Is raise awareness and keep things in the independent press. Nobody from the Government has gone to jail for any of these abuses, and this should infuriate people. Our TV based media is not harping on this, they harp on everything but holding the Government accountable for their actions. If you really want to make change you have to get people awake to the severity of the problems, normal media channels work for the same team as our Government.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The credibility of the United States depends on the prosecution of the political leadership that has presided over half a century of corruption, bought politicians, banking fraud, support for dictators, illegal bombings of sovereign states, torture, mass surveillance, economic terrorism, and military backed coercion. Until the issue of PROSECUTION of those responsible is addressed, US credibility and any kind of goodwill towards the United States will remain down there with North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Israel, and other regimes that practice similarly animal like behaviour.
This is why we have an International Criminal Court, the jurisdiction of which the US is quite happy to see applied to other recalcitrant regimes, but when it comes to applying International Law to America, it is easy to see why said jurisdiction isn't acceptable to the Washington Regime.
The sickening crimes and acts of cruelty committed by the United States, much of it during the eternal sequence of wars started by the Washington Junta, must not go unpunished. Democracy is only possible when the state and private enterprise are not so closely coupled. It is easy to see why a move towards a functioning democracy will now be incredibly difficult for the United States. In my view, the time is not yet right for democracy in the United States. There will have to be some kind of major event that will precipitate democratic reforms, and a significant move away from today's autocratic and totalitarian corporate/military dictatorship. The Republican/Democrat party is representative of the kind of authoritarian elite that can only exist under such circumstances.
Is it better to be respected or feared? The United States is like a crazed animal that needs to be put down. The US is certainly not respected. Feared? perhaps still by some, but the shrinking technical edge of the US military [and its subservient puppets] in comparison to other states will further accelerate the destruction of US military hegemony. The greedy military sector has actually helped in this respect, by providing 'White Elephant' programs like F-35, that aren't really competitive with even last generation Russian types, and are likely surpassed technically by current Chinese aircraft in many respects. The rest of the world, while it may have troubles, could do without a militaristic psychopathic regime, that installs hundreds of military bases across the world, and forms ever dwindling coalitions of the subservient, to lend some credibility to the frequent assaults on sovereign nations, about which the United States has little clue regarding their internal politics, or what is in the best interests of their people. Of course, the United States has no interest in the needs of foreign people, only in compliance with its imperial authority.
Like all similar regimes of the past, I suspect the US regime will implode. When? nobody can know - but I suspect the bankruptcy is fairly imminent. The current system is eroding the basic living standards of middle income earners, who are the key financiers of any state. The United States has only significant budget cuts, a huge national debt, and a massive cut in public spending to look forward to. When you have massive public spending cuts in a country, where a significant proportion of GDP is a result of massive government spending, I'm sure it's pretty obvious what the results will be.
ColdWetDog still can't prove apk wrong here http://ask.slashdot.org/commen... (all he had was an unjustifiable minus mod via sockpuppets he has) and here later too http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... poor ColdWetDog running like "forrest" with his ass whipped and tail between his legs as always vs. apk! Proofs in those links above in black and white and, impossible to deny, loser.
Any time after 2001 the gov has modeled their overreach much like the expanding universe. You'll never see the entirety of it.
We can stand up for those who took decisive action.
We can Bring Snowden Home.
Sign it.
Must ... blame ... Bush ...
Being liberal and wanting a bigger central government are mutually exclusive. I would suggest they aren't really liberal.
Improper... That's a funny way to say illegal.
"Sure, there's a need for bosses in some cases, but deliberately seeking that out, where the objective is to be able to order people around rather than accomplish a specific goal, has to be some kind of mental illness or atavistic throwback."
I read in a sci-fi story from the fifties that to defeat this problem of control freaks, everyone who was to gain position above others had to take various tests designed to weed out all those unwanted social/psycho tendencies (hundreds from a list) and not allow those individuals to be in charge of anyone ever. It even had a scenario of what happens when one bad individual slips through such a system. It was a good story.
How many cases have followed through conviction off the back of this illegal surveillance? In other words, how many convictions should now be considered "unsafe", to borrow an English legal term? Following this, how many cases of technically unlawful incarceration must now be subjected to judicial review, potentially retrial minus the tainted surveillance evidence, and who's got the ledger for the compensation claims for illegal imprisonment, inury in custody (including mental anguish), judicial misdirection? oh this is gonna be a very pretty picture going into 2015...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Tyranny is seen as the "easy way out" by the unprincipled in any *ism. As the "gene pool" of any group shrinks you end up with less people that see concentrations of power as dangerous, and whatever values the group is supposed to represent become irrelevant in the face of increasing personal power.
In far too many situations "cutting red tape" is code for "I want to be a tyrant", and we need to especially beware of those that know little about how society runs that push simple, blanket solutions.
There's one near me whose solution to stopping crime was to lock up all the bikers. Of course that didn't stop crime such as one of his own government attempting to shake down two supermarket chains for money, funny how that one was initially hidden and is still free while the bikers don't get bail for merely meeting.
a more actually centralized -smaller- government for usa would be nice.
why? no 3+ agencies with ability and rights to wiretap everything any of the tens of thousands of agents feel like typing into the identifier box.
I mean, surely this is proof of that there is no actual oversight, no warrants needed, just type whatever the fuck you want into the box.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And once you accept such a premise - that everyone who disagrees with you is acting in bad faith - how could you possibly behave any differently than the NSA did? After all, you are surrounded by Fifth Columns trying to subvert the nation for whatever reason. What else can you do but keep them under surveillance in hopes of catching them in the act?
This is what's really wrong with American political process: treating political opponents as enemies. Democracy works because everyone gets to make their case without having to resort to violence. Democracy is efficient because every viewpoint gets represented and thus considered. But there's also the temptation to simply hurl mud on one's opponents rather than argue one's policies on their merits, and for whatever reason that's the road US has taken. It's a flaw that needs to be corrected.
So both parties listen to the voters, otherwise being rabidly vocal would have no effect. So rather than complain that they can't read your mind, why don't you learn from these special interest groups and start your own? Because "Party X only listens to me if I speak" is not exactly a damning judgement, at least not on the party.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And once you accept such a premise - that everyone who disagrees with you is acting in bad faith - how could you possibly behave any differently than the NSA did?
Because I'm against mass surveillance. And we have evidence of their bad faith: The current situation. I do not suggest we violate anyone's rights, since I view freedom as most important, so that makes me instantly better than what the NSA is doing.
What else can you do but keep them under surveillance in hopes of catching them in the act?
I don't know... pay attention to how they fucking vote?
This is what's really wrong with American political process: treating political opponents as enemies.
They're trying to infringe upon the constitution and our fundamental liberties; they *are* enemies. How could anyone who desires to live in a free country not treat these authoritarian scumbags as enemies?
So both parties listen to the voters, otherwise being rabidly vocal would have no effect.
That makes no sense. They might not be listening to the majority of voters, and since we're stuck with an awful two party system where most people only pay attention to silly hot button issues and are stupid enough to believe in voting for 'the lesser of two evils', you end up with voters voting for people who might have quite a few policies that they disagree with.
Ferguson has non-partisan elections, as do many smaller municipalities in Missouri. (St. Louis City has de facto single-party elections, though there have been sightings of Republicans, and even an occasional Libertarian or Green, from time to time. On the ballot, that is. Not in City Hall.) No parties on the Ferguson ballot.
Here's the vote count for the most recent mayoral election: http://www.stlouisco.com/porta.... Note the lack of party labels.
Guess this means Ferguson is already as good as it gets, eh?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
For an old example, some would argue say that revealing Oliver North's personal embezzlement of the Contra fund for airconditioning, a car etc, would be treason, because that obvious crime was tangled up in a pile of very sensitive state secrets, such as North supplying weapons to Hezbolla less than a year after they blew up more than one hundred US marines.
So I don't know what he could have revealed without opening a can of worms leading to other things but still be deniable and ignore - instead he revealed far too much to deny. It looks to me like he had a variety of bad choices and picked one.
That is a bit of a stretch since that situation has been building up for more than a decade.