At least a dozen US National Security Agency (NSA) employees have been caught using secret government surveillance tools to spy on the e-mails or phone calls of their current or former spouses and lovers in the past decade, according to the intelligence agency’s internal watchdog.
The practice is known in intelligence world shorthand as “LOVEINT” and was disclosed by the NSA Office of the Inspector-General in response to a request by the US Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, Charles Grassley, for a report on abuses of the NSA’s surveillance authority.
In one instance in 2005, a military member of the NSA queried six e-mail addresses of a former US girlfriend — on the first day he obtained access to the data collection system.
He later testified that “he wanted to practice on the system” and gained no information as a result of his queries.
In another instance, a foreign woman who was employed by the US government suspected that her lover, an NSA civilian employee, was listening to her phone calls. She shared her suspicion with another government employee, who reported it.
An investigation found the man abused NSA databases from 1998 to 2003 to snoop on nine phone numbers of foreign women and twice collected communications of an American, according to the inspector general’s report.
The NSA’s spying operations have come under intense scrutiny since disclosures this spring by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the US government collects far more Internet and telephone data than previously publicly known.
Many members of Congress and administration officials staunchly defend the NSA surveillance programs as a critical defense tool against terrorist attacks, but privacy advocates say the spying agency’s authority has grown to be too sweeping.
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the reported incidents of NSA employees’ violations of the law are likely “the tip of the iceberg” of lax data safeguards, but that the laws guiding the NSA’s spying authority in the first place are a bigger issue.
“If you only focus on instances in which the NSA violated those laws, you’re missing the forest for the trees,” he said. “The bigger concern is not with willful violations of the law, but rather with what the law itself allows.”
Most of the abuses detailed in the NSA inspector-general’s Sept. 11 letter to Grassley were discovered through the agency’s own audits, or self-reports and polygraph interviews with the employees. Their names were not disclosed.
According to the report, a female civilian NSA employee snooped on her husband’s phone conversations after looking up a foreign number she found on his phone because she suspected him of cheating.
In at least six of the 12 instances reported by the inspector general since Jan. 1, 2003, the matters were referred to the US Department of Justice.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS