

NSA Officers Sometimes Spy on Love Interests - danso
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-sometimes-spy-on-love-interests

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mehwoot
_NSA said in a statement Friday that there have been "very rare" instances of
willful violations of any kind in the past decade, and none have violated key
surveillance laws._

So there have been willful violations, but they didn't violate key
surveillance laws? How does that work?

~~~
anologwintermut
Same way a cop who murder's someone in the line of duty doesn't mean the
department murdered someone. That part makes sense.

The question(as with cops), is what happened to the people who did violate the
rules? It's unlikely they were fired or prosecuted, hopefully they were
demoted and lost access to the system.

NSA is loath to fire people(and likely revoke their clearance if it's for
cause) with serious classified knowledge since getting a comparable paying job
with a revoked clearance and a large gap on your resume would be very hard.
The worry is they would simply sell knowledge to a foreign government.

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pessimizer
What are the odds that NSA officers sometimes engage in insider trading?

>Most of the incidents, officials said, were self-reported. Such admissions
can arise, for example, when an employee takes a polygraph tests as part of a
renewal of a security clearance.

So the only way we catch them is when they admit it. Great.

~~~
zenocon
Seems like this narrative hasn't been explored and could have legs. I'm not
holding my breath, but I'd like to see a solid media piece that hammered this
idea home for the American-folk.

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invalidOrTaken
If anyone wants to discourage bright hackers from working at the NSA, make it
creepy to their potential love interests: publish stories at popular sites
with titles like, "Is your NSA girlfriend/boyfriend reading your Facebook
messages?"

~~~
soup10
surely that will do the trick

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farseer
Well why wouldn't they? The NSA is run by humans after all.

~~~
orblivion
I would have to agree. Tell me any large organization where there's not a few
infractions in a decade.

And I'm no apologist for the NSA, I just think intellectual honesty is good
for our side of the argument.

~~~
cgranade
In a way, things like this are a part of the whole bloody point that opponents
of the NSA have been making: if you put that much surveillance power into the
hands of a relatively small number of humans, then they will abuse it. These
sort of incidents reveal through their pettiness some of the ways in which
massive surveillance invites abuse.

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hobs
"Oh dont worry, the only abuses at the NSA are jilted lovers spying on exs,
trust us!"

It sounds like a load of hork, especially considering the sliding slope of
truth they have been pushing lately.

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plesner
I was going to ask why these agencies even use polygraphs but found an answer
on wikipedia: "According to a report to Congress, polygraphy in the security
clearance context has little utility in detecting untruth, but significant
utility in inducing verbal admissions. That is, polygraphy is mainly useful as
a prop in the interrogation process. Further, this likely accounts for its
continuing use by government agencies." Sounds real reliable.

~~~
dobbsbob
It's totally just a prop they use as an interrogation trick, much like the
fake phone in Stasi detention centers that the interrogator would pretend to
receive timely intel on whoever they were interrogating, or use it to make
pretend calls to HQ to go pick up the person's family for questioning if they
didn't like the answers. Cops to this day use a lot of those tricks, like the
file folder they come into your cell with that's full of scrap paper they
claim is 'all the evidence against you, so you better start talking'.

Penn & Teller Bullshit did a good episode on lie detecting pseudoscience:
[http://youtu.be/8NLf7XwLpyQ](http://youtu.be/8NLf7XwLpyQ)

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danso
> _Most of the incidents, officials said, were self-reported. Such admissions
> can arise, for example, when an employee takes a polygraph tests as part of
> a renewal of a security clearance_

So of the vague number of reported violations that the NSA will admit to, most
of them are found through confessions...and some of these apparently come from
the kind of NSA employee who can't fool a polygraph test.

There are so many comical things about this that it's almost hard to be
indignant

~~~
MikeCapone
Nobody watches the watchers. We're supposed to just have blind trust.

~~~
VladRussian2
In Polygraph we trust.

Btw, "spying on love interest", pardon my English, isn't it just a PC
expression for "stalking"?

~~~
pessimizer
Yes.

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asperous
_Such admissions can arise, for example, when an employee takes a polygraph
tests as part of a renewal of a security clearance._

Interestingly, this is very illegal for private companies to do under EEPA.
Why should government employers get an exception?

~~~
achivetta
It looks like there's a few different exemptions:
[http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs36.htm](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs36.htm)

