

NSA having flashbacks to Watergate era - stfu
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/25/200325/nsa-having-flashbacks-to-watergate.html

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moocowduckquack
_Joshua Foust, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, pointed out that
the NSA performs about 240 million database searches per year. Noting that it
reported 2,776 violations of privacy rules in a recent one-year period, it had
an error rate of "about 0.001156666667 percent."_

This sounds very nice...

 _One U.S. official, for example, told reporters on a conference call that
about 56,000 communications of Americans were inadvertently intercepted each
year before Bates shuttered the program. The official called that a
"relatively small number."_

Until you realise that just one of those reported violations could be talking
about 56,000 records.

If I were to perform the same sort of crimes against statistics as Mr Foust, I
could multiply his error rate by the 56,000 that the other official states is
a relatively small number, however that would give an error rate of over 64%.

So either that number of 56,000 is actually quite big compared to most
violations, or there are far more database lookups than reported, or the NSA
are spending most of their time looking at the largest source of data, or all
of these figures are nonsense as they come from an organisation that is,
pretty much by definition, not allowed to give out accurate figures.

 _note: edited for accident by stupid idiot brain. I confused 56,000 with
65,000 half way through and ended up with 75% instead of 64%. Not that it
matters that much._

~~~
eli
I think Foust's larger point is fair. Based on what we know so far, the NSA's
excesses appear to be mostly inadvertent or perhaps careless. I don't mean to
minimize it -- even a single instance of violating someone's Constitutional
rights is a big deal... but it's still a different beast than Watergate-era
programs _specifically designed_ to infiltrate and surveil American anti-war
activists.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Some of this data is supposedly being used to target street level crime by the
DEA though - [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-
idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-
idUSBRE97409R20130805)

 _One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after
a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case
he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation
of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor
pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and
revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA
intercept._

 _" I was pissed," the prosecutor said. "Lying about where the information
came from is a bad start if you're trying to comply with the law because it
can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court." The
prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the
investigation, he said._

