Internal audit shows NSA often breaks privacy rules, made thousands of violations a year

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So every single pusillanimous quisling who got up and told us that (while definitely big and impressive) the NSA’s little operation was 100% abuse-free (which is to say, virtually everybody ostensibly watching the watchers) was either pitifully underequipped to serve as oversight(but unwilling to admit that) or lying through their teeth, or both.

Well. Fuck.

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“Zero abuses of NSA PRISM, and that’s no bullshit” -Keith “Lying M’fer” Alexander

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This is irrelevant. The discussion isn’t over whether the NSA protects US citizens’ privacy good enough, but over whether they have the right to run a surveillance dragnet of such magnitude and intrusiveness. The fundamental argument of the NSA supporters is that the surveillance isn’t a problem if they do it good enough. If we acknowledge that they aren’t doing it good enough, then we have accepted their argument. All they would have to respond is: “we’ll fix it and add more safeguards”. This is a bait and switch. They are trying for force us into an ends justifies the means argument. But the real argument is over principles and the Constitution, not over how little collateral damage was caused. The argument of opposers must always be about the 4th Amendment. Always.

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He’s in an “undisclosed location” in Russia. Russian officials actually deny that he’s in Moscow.

So that’s the first part of “Foot In Mouth Friday” with the embarrassing disclosure. We’ve got a few hours yet until close of business in Washington DC for the second part and the embarrassing government press conference. Have you got enough popcorn?

Ah, but the NSA has a different definition of ‘zero’ ‘abuse’ ‘of’ ‘NSA’ ‘Prism’, ‘comma’ ‘and’ ‘that’s’ ‘no’ ‘bullshit’.

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The headline here only emphasizes the real problem. They’re not breaking the “rules”, they’re breaking the LAW and violating the Constitution.

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Searching for “Ericsson” in combination with “radio” or “radar” looks much like industrial espionage to me. My source is heise.de, who also posted an analysis of the NSA audit.

We get it, you’re a whistle blower. You don’t need to keep linking to your blog.

Exactly. Next up, they will concede that one FISA court is insufficient, so Congress will create another secret arm to watch FISA, which will mean that they’ve successfully baited and switched us again into agreeing to the general principle of secret courts. When, in fact, there should be NO secret courts deciding constitutionality, and no secret arms overseeing them, and no secret massive dragnet surveillance programs, period. As they say in the Cloud Atlas, “I will not be subjected to criminal abuse.”

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FISA has to go. There is no compromise. America will continue to degrade and regress at an ever increasing rate if their isn’t a complete 180 degree about face. There is no other alternative.

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Apologies in advance for my poor attempt at humor, but I can’t help but spin this constitutional atrocity as a feeble joke. If I may:

The NSA’s recent exposures remind me of a phrase we’ve ALL heard/said before, “Trust me; just the tip…”

:wink:

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Their use of language is also really disingenuous.

  • “Workload Issues” means "Pressure to say ‘Yes’ overrides willingness to take the time to investigate the request and decide whether it should or shouldn’t be approved even under the amazingly broad guidelines for approval.
  • “Did not follow standard operating procedures” means “Said ‘Yes’ without even pretending to be too busy.”
  • “Overly broad search terms” means not only “20* for Egypt instead of ^20* also matches 1-202- for Washington DC”*, but also “Searching for things they’re not legally allowed to search for, just because they can”
  • “Computer errors” means “bad design decisions” (not that they’re the only people in the world who use that excuse.)

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