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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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
This is NSA burying a bone - by releasing it on a day when nobody's watching the news (except for us nerds) and nobody's writing stories about the news. It's like releasing bad news on a Friday afternoon, except that Christmas Day newsdumps are even less likely to be read by anyone.