The Scariest Thing About NSA Analysts Spying On Their Lovers Is How They Were Caught - BusinessInsi

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The Scariest Thing About NSA Analysts Spying On Their Lovers Is How They Were Caught
Michael Kelley - BusinessInsider
8/27/13

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Last week Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal reported that National Security Agency analysts have occasionally used vast surveillance tools to spy on love interests.

NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong told reporters that willful violations of spying rules — dubbed "LOVEINT" — happened on “very rare” occasions, adding that he didn't have exact numbers because most of the violations were self-reported.

(One situation in which self-reported abuses arise is when an employee takes a polygraph test as part of a renewal of a security clearance.)

D.B. Grady, who co-authored the book "Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry" with fellow investigative journalist Marc Ambinder, said that the lack of oversight regarding abuse by NSA analysts is the most troubling part of the admission.

"The real shocking revelation about all that is that this information is self-reported," Grady told Business Insider. "You mean there's no record? I can't download something from BitTorrent without my ISP shutting me down and these guys can spy on their girlfriends and boyfriends across the planet and nobody finds out? That's the most shocking thing of all; all of the security mechanisms lack teeth."

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More: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-nsa-abuses-are-self-reported-2013-8