Pair of Democratic senators warn of more NSA violations

Two Democratic senators warned Friday that a new report detailing thousands of instances in which the National Security Agency broke laws while spying was only “the tip of a larger iceberg” of surveillance violations.

“We have previously said that the violations of these laws and rules were more serious than had been acknowledged, and we believe Americans should know that this confirmation is just the tip of a larger iceberg,” said Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., in a prepared statement.

The senators’ comments follow a Washington Post report Friday that detailed the NSA breaking privacy rules or overstepping its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/pair-of-democratic-senators-warn-of-more-nsa-violations/article/2534378

The revelation that the National Security Agency broke court-imposed privacy rules thousands of times a year in snooping Americans’ phone and email records would have changed the outcome of last month’s House vote to defund the program, according to one legislator who was part of the effort.

“We only needed seven votes to switch and I think there were at least seven, probably more like 20-30, who had their concerns about the program but were prepared to give the intelligence agencies the benefit of the doubt,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Republican, told The Washington Times after the NSA rules violations came to light.

The House in late July voted 217-205 to defeat an amendment that would have cut funds for domestic data gathering by the NSA except where based on individualized suspicion.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/17/gop-rep-house-would-have-nixed-nsa-program/

The morning's major scoop :

"The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to and other top-secret documents."

According to the Post, "most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls."

It adds that the audit and other documents come from and "include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance."

An NSA official tells the Post that it tries to flag such problems "at the earliest possible moment, [and] implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down. ... We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/16/212544441/nsa-has-broken-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-each-year

If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear...