U.S. officials for nearly three years accessed data on thousands of domestic phone numbers they shouldn't have and then misrepresented their actions to a secret spy court to reauthorize the government's surveillance program, documents released Tuesday show.
Okay they admit guilt and they lied to get the court to reauthorize the program. Name the people that should be fired and fire them.
Officials said that the complexity of the
computer system — and a misunderstanding of the laws, court orders and
internal policies controlling analysts' actions — contributed to the
abuses. There's no evidence that the NSA intentionally used its
surveillance powers to spy on Americans for political purposes, a fear
of many critics who recall the FBI's intrusive surveillance of civil
rights leaders and protesters in the 1960s.
The computer system is "so complex" that they misused it 1000s of times? That is a Soviet level obfuscation if I ever saw one. I wonder if any of these phone numbers belonged to Kate Upton or some other hot celebrity. I'm sure some NSA analyst would have loved to snoop her phone calls and text messages.
Walton noted, for instance, that just 1,935 phone numbers out of 17,835
on a list investigators were working with in early 2009 met the legal
standard.
So that was 15,900 illegal phone queries? How are the heads of this organization still in place?
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