[liberationtech] FW: NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests | Techdirt

[michael gurstein]

Okay, so we have a few joke "abuses" to divert attention but what about the
intentional non-abuses and the non-joke ones... Unless the NSA folks are
just a bunch of love sick adolescents without plans for after retirement or
some aspirations for making a killing in the stock  market or that the way
in which the national interests of the US are defined no longer includes
maintaining a lead in certain strategic industries--aircraft manufacture,
chip design, gene splicing or whatever--then this is just pablum for the
gullible.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu
[mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of James S.
Tyre
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:56 AM
To: 'liberationtech'; 'cpunks'
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A
Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests | Techdirt

Best summary: https://twitter.com/slworona/status/370946271646711809

--
James S. Tyre
Law Offices of James S. Tyre
10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512
Culver City, CA 90230-4969
310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)
jstyre at jstyre.com
Policy Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org


> -----Original Message-----
> From: liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu
> [mailto:liberationtech- bounces at lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of 
> coderman
> Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 9:46 PM
> To: liberationtech; cpunks
> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been 
> A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests | 
> Techdirt
> 
> LOVEINT!!!
> 
> oh god this alone makes it all worth it,,, thank you Snowden!
> 
> P.S. setup a bitcoin donation address.
> 
> best regards,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:21 PM, Yosem Companys 
> <companys at stanford.edu>
wrote:
> > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130823/18432024301/nsa-admits-oka
> > y-
> > okay-there-have-been-bunch-intentional-abuses-including-spying-loved
> > -o
> > nes.shtml
> >
> > NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional 
> > Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests
> >
> > from the and-we're-just-now-telling-congress dept
> >
> > So, this week, we wrote about the NSA quietly admitting that there 
> > had been intentional abusesof its surveillance infrastructure, 
> > despite earlier claims by NSA boss Keith Alexander and various folks 
> > in Congress that there had been absolutely no "intentional" abuses.
> > Late on Friday (of course) the NSA finally put out an official 
> > statement admitting to an average of one intentional abuser per year 
> > over the past ten years. The AP is reporting that at least one of 
> > the abuses involved an NSA employee spying on a former spouse.
> > Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal suggests that spying on love 
> > interests happens somewhat more
> often:
> >
> > The practice isn't frequent - one official estimated a handful of 
> > cases in the last decade - but it's common enough to garner its own
spycraft label:
> > LOVEINT.
> >
> > A handful is still significantly more than once. And it's a lot more 
> > than the "zero" times we'd been told about repeatedly by defenders 
> > of the program.
> >
> > While the NSA says it takes these abuses seriously, there's no 
> > indication that the analyst was fired.
> >
> > Much more troubling is that it appears that the NSA only told its 
> > oversight committee in the Senate about all of this a few days ago:
> >
> > The Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed this week on the 
> > willful violations by the NSA's inspector general's office, as first 
> > reported by Bloomberg.
> >
> > "The committee has learned that in isolated cases over the past 
> > decade, a very small number of NSA personnel have violated NSA 
> > procedures - in roughly one case per year," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 
> > the California Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a 
> > statement
Friday.
> >
> > Of course, this is the same Dianne Feinstein who, exactly a week 
> > ago, said the following:
> >
> > As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an 
> > instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to 
> > conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.
> >
> > Yeah. Because apparently the NSA chose not to tell the committee 
> > until a few days later, despite it happening for years.
> >
> > And, of course, they release this all on a Friday night, hoping that 
> > it'll avoid the news cycle...
> >
> > In the meantime, the NSA just made Senator Feinstein look like a 
> > complete fool. She's been its strongest defender in Congress for 
> > years, and has stood up for it time and time again, despite all of 
> > this questionable
> activity.
> > Then, last week, it lets her tell lies about it without telling her 
> > beforehand that there had been such abuses. At this point, it's 
> > abundantly clear that Feinstein's "oversight" of the NSA is a joke.
> > She's either incompetent or lying. Either way, it appears that the 
> > NSA is running circles around her, and isn't subject to any real 
> > Congressional oversight. At some point, you'd think that maybe she'd 
> > stop defending it and actually start doing her job when it comes to 
> > oversight. You'd think the fact that it let her make a complete fool 
> > of herself by claiming there had been no intentional abuses should 
> > make Feinstein realize that the NSA situation is out of control.
> > But, tragically, this seems unlikely. Even her statement seems to 
> > want to minimize the seriousness of the fact that she -- the person 
> > in charge of oversight -- was completely kept in the dark about very 
> > serious intentional
> abuses. Senator Feinstein just got hung out to dry by the NSA.
> > You'd think she'd stop going to bat for it and its lies.
> >
> > Either way, we've now gone from General Keith Alexander and 
> > Feinstein claiming "no abuses," to them saying no "intentional"
> > abuses, to this latest admission of plenty of intentional abuses,
including spying on lovers.
> > Perhaps, instead of lying, it's time for the NSA to come clean and 
> > to get some real oversight.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google.
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> --
> Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on 
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