Snowden Says NSA Employees 'Routinely' Passed Around Naked Photos That Had Been ...

[Mike]

One of the repeated talking points by the NSA for years has been about how there are all these "strict controls" on who has access to data and how it's used. We've seen pretty clear evidence that the NSA's definition of "strict controls" (like so many NSA definitions of plain English words and phrases) is different than what most people consider "strict controls." After all, it insisted for months that Snowden didn't have any access to actual surveillance data... until it was revealed that he did. There were also all those cases of flagrant abuses of the NSA's system that were revealed last fall. The NSA pretended this showed how good they were at catching anyone who abused the system, but the details suggested otherwise. Many of the "caught" abuses only came out years later when the people who abused the systems to spy on lovers and friends admitted to it during interviews.

Keith Alexander insisted that the NSA had "100% audibility" of the actions of their employees and they made sure that no one abused their powers:

"The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over these programs. We can audit the actions of our people 100%, and we do that," he said.

Addressing the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas, an annual gathering for the information security industry, he gave a personal example: "I have four daughters. Can I go and intercept their emails? No. The technical limitations are in there." Should anyone in the NSA try to circumvent that, in defiance of policy, they would be held accountable, he said: "There is 100% audibility."

Of course, that doesn't explain why so many of the "LOVINT" cases only came out after people self-confessed many years later, rather than through any audits.

Meanwhile, in the latest Ed Snowden interview (done with the Guardian's Alan Rusbridger), Snowden reveals that NSA employees routinely would share naked photos that had been intercepted:

“You've got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old,” Snowden said. “They've suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records. In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense. For example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising position. But they're extremely attractive.

“So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and show their co-worker. The co-worker says: ‘Hey that's great. Send that to Bill down the way.’ And then Bill sends it to George and George sends it to Tom. And sooner or later this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people. It's never reported. Nobody ever knows about it because the auditing of these systems is incredibly weak. The fact that your private images, records of your private lives, records of your intimate moments have been taken from your private communications stream from the intended recipient and given to the government without any specific authorization without any specific need is itself a violation of your rights. Why is that in a government database?”

Then Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, asked: “You saw instances of that happening?”

“Yeah,” Snowden responded.

“Numerous?”

“It's routine enough, depending on the company that you keep, it could be more or less frequent. These are seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions."

Of course, none of this is really that new. Way back in 2008, you may recall, that it was revealed that NSA analysts were listening in on pillow talk phone calls between Americans overseas and loved ones back home... and sharing those recordings around the office:

Not only were calls between Americans listened to and recorded on a regular basis, the "good parts" (i.e., phone sex) were sent around to other operators to listen to as well. One of the operators said that on a regular basis messages would be sent around with messages like: "Hey, check this out. There's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out."

That was revealed years before Snowden even worked for the NSA. It would appear that little has changed.

Originally Published: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:41:12 GMT
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[Mike]

Following on the news that Ed Snowden told the Guardian how NSA employees routinely passed around pictures they had intercepted of "extremely attractive" people who were naked, the NSA has issued one of its typical non-denial denials. In an email to Forbes' Kashmir Hill, NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines basically said, "If we knew about it, that wouldn't be allowed":

“NSA is a professional foreign-intelligence organization with a highly trained workforce, including brave and dedicated men and women from our armed forces,” said spokesperson Vanee Vines by email. “As we have said before, the agency has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities or professional standards, and would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct.”

Except, of course, what nearly every story talking about this has left out is that this is hardly the first such revelation. The NSA has a history and pattern of this kind of thing. Back in 2008, it was revealed that NSA analysts had been listening in on and passing around tapes of Americans having phone sex:

Not only were calls between Americans listened to and recorded on a regular basis, the "good parts" (i.e., phone sex) were sent around to other operators to listen to as well. One of the operators said that on a regular basis messages would be sent around with messages like: "Hey, check this out. There's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out."

Even if we take the NSA at its word that it has a "zero tolerance" policy for this kind of thing, that actually makes the story even worse. Because it just shows how weak (to non-existent) the NSA's "100% auditability" really is. Keith Alexander insisted that everything done by people with access to these databases was tracked and audited. But it's becoming increasingly clear that that's not true at all. And it makes you wonder just how much abuse is going on that the NSA has no idea about -- potentially for things even worse than listening in on phone sex or passing nudie pics around the office.

Originally Published: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 20:23:35 GMT
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