Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans

nbc ^ | 6/7 | isakoff

[RummyChick]

The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.

At least some of the phone calls and emails were pulled from among the hundreds of millions stored by telecommunications companies as part of an NSA surveillance program. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, Thursday night publicly acknowledged what he called “a sensitive intelligence collection program” after its existence was disclosed by the Guardian newspaper.

[cookcounty]

But...but...our systems are so robust....”

Two names to consider: Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.

And what difference does it make if the systems ARE robust? With it now acceptable to the President to get subpoenas with false claims, they’ll look into your data if they feel like it. All they have to do is secretly tell a secret Judge that they need it.

[Victor]

Time for a Military coup....

[Black Agnes]

Dude. He had to adopt because he’s gay.

He did pro bono legal work for a gay rights group. What sort of ‘nice Catholic boy’ does that?

Would you do pro bono work for a gay rights group?

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/04/nation/na-roberts4

[b4its2late]

[Personal Responsibility]

Exactly. Even if it was just an accident, it shows exactly why NO ONE should have access to all that information.

[Personal Responsibility]

This Administration isn’t fishing for those linked to terrorism. It is fishing for those linked to the TEA Party, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Israel, etc.

---

Loosely translated as “those who will experience mistakenly lost records,, more IRS Obamacre related intrusions and detailed, lengthy reviews of all medical procedures, regardless of how urgent the care is.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, and they’ve only been doing it by mistake for four years. Thanks RummyChick.

[2harddrive]

It was an ACCIDENT? That is a BLATANT LIE.

[Colonel_Flagg]

The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.

Parse this carefully. The argument will now be "we didn't mean to do what Bush did, but we went to court and fixed the problem, unlike the Bush Administration." It's not even good spin.

[Eleutheria5]

Of course they were destroyed. Why would we want to surveil innocent Americans. It’s the counterrevolutionaries who might become terrorists that interest us. They might need blackmailing to shut them up.

[Excellence]

At least some of the phone calls and emails were pulled from among the hundreds of millions stored...

Hundreds of millions is a really big number.

[Blood of Tyrants]

So that is their new story? That they MISTAKENLY spied on millions of people?

[stevie_d_64]

Crocodile outrage, just like Crocodile tears...

[Blood of Tyrants]

How many? A few hundred million.

[Kevmo]

Um. Yeah.

These dumbfoops never seem to have heard of the 4th amendmant and the concept of “unreasonable searches”.

[Kevmo]

It’s not the color of one’s skin that offends people...it’s how thin it is.
***That’s obviously tagline worthy, since you already have it as a tagline.

[RFEngineer]

“You can’t destroy electronic data in any meaningful sense.”

This is a good point.

So here is what must be done:

The NSA must let every American examine their “file” that is kept on them. Just like the Stasi files were opened. It could easily be done.

Every American should be able to see the file that NSA maintains on them. Even if it’s just “metadata”.

Then we get to decide what happens after that.

Anything less is unAmerican.

So you want to collect stuff without a specific warrant? Make them show it to the victim of the unwarranted collection.

[Black Agnes]

Just like you can never be certain the data is destroyed, you can never be certain they’ve shown you all the data they have.

You’re trusting them. Probably a mistake based on past behavior.

[RFEngineer]

“You’re trusting them. Probably a mistake based on past behavior.”

Oh you’re absolutely correct. But still, they need to be told to open their files to every innocent victim who’s data has been collected.

They won’t come clean, but hey, it’s a start.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

After Obammie the Commie took control, the state-run media said, “We’re all socialists now.”

To which I now append:

“We are all conspiracy theorists now.”