http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57598797-38/nsa-violated-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-audit-finds/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/nsa-violated-surveillance-restrictions-thousands-times-documents-show
“…at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line,” a senior NSA official said.
Wow. NSA spies’ work is difficult, and so that makes it OK, they claim, to break the law and violate our privacy.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the data collection effort was unconstitutional, but the NSA’s violations are increasing.
The NSA operates as a government within the government, a rogue power that sees itself as above U.S. law in its zeal to “collect it all.”
This latest revelation about the NSA’s abuse of power will be all over the news Friday, and it will lead to the introduction of legislation, again, to attempt to rein in its power. If this does not lead to substantial civil liberties protections, apparently nothing will and we may as well admit that representative democracy is dead and that authoritarianism is alive and well in the U.S. And at that point, the U.S. will have lost its war on terror because it will have ceased to exist other than as a place on the map that once stood for something important.
One U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, is fighting the good fight to try to defend civil liberties:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/q-a-senator-ron-wyden-on-nsa-surveillance-and-government-transparency-20130815
Sen. Wyden says these revelations about the NSA breaking privacy laws thousands of times are “just the tip of a larger iceberg” regarding its abuses of power:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/nsa-revelations-privacy-breaches-udall-wyden
And the iceberg is starting to be revealed. It turns out that the NSA accessed tens of thousands of innocent Americans’ emails:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/nsa-illegally-collected-thousands-emails-court
Reaction to these revelations of the NSA’s law breaking ranges from a defense by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to criticism from Sen. Wyden and civil libertarians:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/nsa-violated-privacy-rules-audit