[liberationtech] NSA's 100% perfect internal audits...

[Case Black]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130820/15441924258/us-still-cant-figure-out-what-snowden-took-what-happened-to-those-perfect-audits.shtml

Remember how the NSA's biggest defenders keep insisting that the NSA's
perfect "audits" prevent abuse? Here's Keith Alexander insisting that
such audits
are perfect<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/can-nsa-director-keith-alexander-explain-his-contradictory-claims/278394/>
:

*"The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over
these programmes. We can audit the actions of our people 100%, and we do
that," he said.

Addressing the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas, an annual gathering for
the information security industry, he gave a personal example: "I have four
daughters. Can I go and intercept their emails? No. The technical
limitations are in there." Should anyone in the NSA try to circumvent that,
in defiance of policy, they would be held accountable, he said: "There is
100% audibility." Only 35 NSA analysts had the authority to query a
database of US phone records, he said.*

Yet, many months after the initial leaks, it's being reported that the US
government still doesn't know what Snowden
took<http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/20/20108770-us-doesnt-know-what-snowden-took-sources-say?lite>
:

*More than two months after documents leaked by former contractor Edward
Snowden first began appearing in the news media, the National Security
Agency still doesn’t know the full extent of what he took, according to
intelligence community sources, and is “overwhelmed” trying to assess the
damage.*
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