XMAS News Dump: U.S. Spy Agency Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans [View all]

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U.S. Spy Agency Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans
By David Lerman Dec 24, 2014 2:07 PM PT 15 Comments Email Print

The National Security Agency today released reports on intelligence collection that may have violated the law or U.S. policy over more than a decade, including unauthorized surveillance of Americans’ overseas communications.

The NSA, responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, released a series of required quarterly and annual reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013.

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. They were posted on the NSA’s website at around 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

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. The analyst “has been advised to cease her activities,” it said.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-24/spy-agency-to-release-reports-documenting-surveillance-errors.html?hootPostID=911ff5c38bf8258ace10d682ac22a4b3