Christmas surprise from the NSA: If you want to release something that no one will pay attention to, what better timing than Christmas Eve? At least, that seems to be the reasoning of the US National Security Agency, which last night released detailed reports detailing every illegal espionage that they did to American citizens. Ho Ho Ho!
The classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought against the agency by American Union Civil Liberties under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of these privacy breaches have been reported in the past, but these documents show new details. A series of annual and quarterly reports from 2001 to the second quarter of 2013 are now available to every citizen (PDF), and cover some of its greatest successes NSA:
Spying on agency partners, more information on the practice called LOVEINT, mistakes in targeting US citizens for espionage, background questions data returning US citizens who were not targeted, storing stolen data on servers, and accessing it by people without security checks.
In fact, with the documents provided by the agency, it is difficult to judge how often these privacy violations occur, although previous reports show that they happen thousands of times a year as TheVerge reports.
E-mail promotions between agents and "unauthorized recipients" containing U.S. citizen IDs, making IDs available in "unauthorized chatrooms," and providing classified information to those who were not allowed to see them are just a few of the issues raised. includes the NSA Christmas present.
