Well, the spy is some pasty-faced electronic peeping tom at the NSA rather than James Bond.
Posted on 09/27/2013 8:14:27 AM PDT by markomalley
The National Security Agency has admitted that analysts have abused their authority to spy on love interests on several occasions.
In response to a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the NSA identified 12 incidents since 2003 in which analysts intentionally misused their intelligence gathering powers.
In one case, an analyst spied on a foreign phone number she discovered in her husband's cellphone, suspecting that he had cheated on her. She intercepted phone calls involving her husband, investigators discovered. The analyst resigned before any disciplinary action could be taken.
On one analyst's first day of access to the NSA system, he pulled records on six email addresses belonging to his ex-girlfriend. He claimed he just wanted to test the system. The NSA demoted him and docked his pay for two months.
In another case, an analyst collected call data on his girlfriend and his own home phone number "out of curiosity." He retired before the agency took any action.
Another analyst based in a foreign location collected phone records on her foreign national boyfriend and other foreign nationals, saying she wanted to be sure she wasn't associating with "shady characters." She resigned before the agency took disciplinary action.
An analyst who collected data on his wife lost access to the classified system, and another analyst who said he misused the system to help learn a foreign language also lost access to the database.
In the letter to Grassley, George Ellard, the NSA's inspector general, said the agency currently has two open investigations and is reviewing a third for possible investigation.
The NSA has admitted that analysts have violated legal restrictions on thousands of occasions in recent years, but the agency says most of the violations are accidental.
“I appreciate the transparency that the Inspector General has provided to the American people," Grassley, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. "We shouldn’t tolerate even one instance of misuse of this program. Robust oversight of the program must be completed to ensure that both national security and the Constitution are protected.”
The letter was sent on Sept. 11 and Grassley's office released it to the public on Thursday.
Paging Justice Roberts?
Doesn’t surprise me in the least. This much power will often be too much of a temptation for people not sufficiently mature to govern their actions. Which is one reason the security clearance process needs to be cinched up much tighter than it has been for the last 10 years.
Well, the spy is some pasty-faced electronic peeping tom at the NSA rather than James Bond.
The analyst resigned before any disciplinary action could be taken...He retired before the agency took any action...She resigned before the agency took disciplinary actionWTF? It is not criminal? They can't be prosecuted after leaving the agency?
Yeah, I’d love to know what they have on him.
Probably goes something like: "If you let me retire and collect my pension and health benefits for life, I will keep my mouth shut."
You’re absolutely correct. This is the greatest fraud on the American people since the Nation was formed.
Big deal. So what if some of the government thugs who are engaging in unconstitutional spying also violated their Jack booted agency’s policies.
They can’t prosecute because the criminals know too much.
12 incidents in roughly ten years. Excuse me, but you call this abuse? Sounds like safeguards were up and working in the few cases sited, but to infer that there was widespread abuse is rediculous. This should be taken off the side bar.
They exempted fathers who were checking out their daughter’s latest boyfriend. That would have added at least 10,000 to the incident total. /sarc
Of course I believe that the NSA is being completely honest for forthcoming on all abuse cases. Our government, like the POTUS, Congress, EPA, IRS, FEC, NSA, etc would never ever lie or mislead us. /sarc
Straight out of “The Lives of Others.”
true, but that one would be legit
I'm sorry, but I disagree: with what we've heard of PRISM and XKeyScore (I think there was another one, too) the agency collects far too much. It operates on both the assumption of guilt and guilt by association.
I don't want those introduced into American culture, and certainly not jurisprudence. (Remember the "parallel construction" story where the DEA [IIRC] was building a case interdependently
but working with the NSA?)
It’s a clear, longstanding and broad pattern; taxpayers are robbed to pay for some super expensive, whiz-bang pieces of hardware, which are then transformed into toys for adolescents mascarading as adults.
SWAT Teams, NSA, others...?
If it’s hi-speed or secretive you can be sure the “Hold muh beer —watch THIS..!”-factor will go up 1,000% in no time.
ONE time per year, for the last 12 years, huh?
For an entity with 30,000 employees and an almost UNLIMITED budget and almost no oversight...?!
ONE TIME PER YEAR???
That conforms PERFECTLY to the NSA pattern —deny ad nauseum until it’s a *demonstrable* lie, then finally admit kicking and screaming to some wrongdoing which is a MILLION times smaller than what is actually going on.
If they say once per year, then it’s a million times PER DAY.
MOST of them are doing this EVERY time it strikes their most whimsical fancy.
THESE LIARS ARE DOING THIS ALLLL THE TIME.
How many thousands have they killed just for the HELL OF IT?
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