By Cliff Montgomery – Sept. 9th, 2013
“The National Security Agency [NSA] now says that some of its analysts knowingly and deliberately exceededits surveillance authority on occasion over the past decade,” stated an Associated Press (AP) article on Aug.23rd.
The NSA admitted in a statement that “very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have beenfound.”
The news service added that federal officials have declared “those involved [with the questionable spyingactivities] have been disciplined.”
However, the agency insisted that the questionable actions did not violate either the Anti-Patriot Act or theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
FISA and Anti-Patriot Act violations often have been the focus of classified data releases leaked by EdwardSnowden, a former NSA systems analyst.
In August, the Senate Intelligence Committee received briefings on the acknowledged violations. Thecommittee chairman told reporters the willful violations roughly occurred about once a year.
Federal officials have insisted that these violations were single “inadvertent” actions. But recent revelationsprove otherwise.
“The National Security Agency declassified three secret U.S. court opinions,” stated a separate AP articlepublished on Aug. 21st,” showing how [the NSA] scooped up as many as 56,000 emails and othercommunications by Americans with no connection to terrorism annually over three years.”
The news service also pointed out that the declassified opinions made plain how the NSA “revealed the errorto the court and changed how it gathered Internet communications.”
Perhaps fearing fallout from more leaks on the NSA’s controversial surveillance programs, the release of thecourt opinions was approved by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
“The opinions show that when the NSA reported its inadvertent gathering of American-based Internet traffic tothe court in 2011,” stated AP, “the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the agency to find ways tolimit what it collects and how long it keeps it.”
According to federal officials, the NSA was secretly conducting an Internet-sweeping operation whichindiscriminately collected thousands of emails from innocent American citizens and others, all in an effort tofilter through the emails of foreign computer users.
“Because many web mail services use such bundled transmissions,” a U.S. official told AP, “it was impossibleto collect the targeted materials without also sweeping up data from innocent domestic U.S. users.”
“The officials did not explain, however, why they did not prepare for that possibility when the surveillanceprogram was created,” pointed out the news service, “and why they discovered it only after the program waswell under way.”
