

Obama Was Wrong: NSA Employees Have Deliberately "Abused" Their Power - nealabq
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/bloomberg_report_nsa_employees_have_deliberately_abused_their_power.html

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zeteo
>an average of one case of intentional abuse per year has been documented in
internal reports [...] the number of reported deliberate abuses is small

According to the WSJ, these were caught mostly through self-reporting by the
people who did them [1]. Relying on self-reporting doesn't seem like such a
great safeguard, and it appears likely that there would be more non-self-
reported cases than self-reported.

[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-
someti...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-sometimes-
spy-on-love-interests/?KEYWORDS=NSA)

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pvnick
>An anonymous official attributed the abuses to “overzealous NSA employees or
contractors” eager to prevent another 9/11 attack.

I find this incredibly funny. "Sure we broke the law, but it's because we love
our country _too_ much"

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jacquesm
NPR coverage of the same:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-
way/2013/08/23/214917391/nsa...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-
way/2013/08/23/214917391/nsa-says-some-analysts-willfully-violated-spying-
authority)

So we go from '0' to 'some'. Let's hope that's not a trend. Human nature being
what it is I have a hard time believing discipline is so tight there that only
one person per year on average transcended their authority.

~~~
devx
First it's "never abused their power". Then it's "never abused their power
_intentionally_ " (those tens of thousands of spying "errors" every year don't
count apparently), then it's "only a few" intentional ones. Then it's a lot
more - "but you should trust them anyway".

I wonder what Obama will say at his next conference on this. I think we can
predict pretty well what he's going to say, though. He'll tell us _exactly
what we want to hear_ (how civil liberties are important for them and so on),
but without mentioning any specific ways to stop the abuses, or if he does,
the people he will put in charge to fix it will be all insiders who were
leading those same abuses before, too.

But nobody should trust Obama until Clapper and Alexander get fired. Heck, I'd
say impeach Obama, too, and send a very strong message to every future
president that will assume the role this _century_ that spying on own
citizens, and even abusive spying against any and all foreign citizens (even
abroad, spying should be done on specific _targets_ , not everyone en mass) -
that such spying is not acceptable.

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lcusack
Being a little generous to say "Wrong", I believe it was a blatant lie.

~~~
dagw
I have no problem believing that there is a mutually beneficial don't ask
don't tell policy going on between the president and the internal workings of
the NSA.

