NSA broke privacy rules thousand of times, reports The Washington Post

In an extensive article released Thursday night on its website, The Washington Post reports that an internal audit and other top secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency (NSA) “has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008.

“Most of the infractions,” the Post reports, “involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law 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.”

According to the Post, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided the documents to them. The article also states that “in one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”

The Post adds that “The NSA audit … dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.”

In October 2011, says The Washington Post, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the collection effort was unconstitutional, saying that methods used were “deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds.”

According to the Post article, “James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that the court found the NSA in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Obama administration has fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit that seeks the opinion.”

To read the complete Washington Post article written by Barton Gellman, click here.