By Justin Elliott/ProPublica
Last week, the Washington Post published an internal audit finding the NSA had violated privacy rules thousands of times in recent years.
In response, the spy agency held a rare conference call for the press maintaining that the violations are “not willful” and “not malicious.”
It’s difficult to fully evaluate the NSA’s track record, since the agency has been so tight-lipped on the topic. What information about rule violations has the agency itself released?
Take a look.
That is the publicly released version of a semiannual report from the administration to Congress describing NSA violations of rules surrounding the FISA Amendments Act. The act is one of the key laws governing NSA surveillance, including now-famous programs like Prism.
As an oversight measure, the law requires the attorney general to submit semiannual reports to the congressional intelligence and judiciary committees.
The section with the redactions above is titled “Statistical Data Relating to Compliance Incidents.”
One of the only unredacted portions reads, “The value of statistical information in assessing compliance in situations such as this is unclear. A single incident, for example, may have broad ramifications. Multiple incidents may increase the incident count, but may be deemed of very limited significance.”
The document, dated May 2010, was released after the ACLU filed a freedom of information lawsuit.
As the Post noted, members of Congress can read the unredacted version of the semiannual reports, but only in a special secure room. They cannot take notes or publicly discuss what they read.
For more on the NSA, see our story on how the agency says it can’t search its own e-mails, and what we know about the agency’s tapping of Internet cables.
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Previously:
* America’s Lying About Spying: Worse Than You Think.
* Obama Continues To Lie His Ass Off About The NSA.
* The Surveillance Reforms Obama Supported Before He Was President.
* America’s Spying: Worse Than You Think.
* Has The U.S. Government Lied About Its Snooping? Let’s Go To The Videotape.
* Who Are We At War With? That’s Classified.
* Six Ways Congress May Reform NSA Snooping.
* NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own E-Mails.
* Does The NSA Tap That?
* Obama Explains The Difference Between His Spying And Bush’s Spying.
* FAQ: What You Need To Know About The NSA’s Surveillance Programs.
* NSA: Responding To This FOIA Would Help “Our Adversaries”.
* Fact-Check: The NSA And 9/11.
* The NSA’s Black Hole: 5 Things We Still Don’t Know About The Agency’s Snooping.
* Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Citing Chicago Case Omit Most Of Mumbai Plotter’s Story.
* Obama’s War On Truth And Transparency.
* ProPublica’s Guide To The Best Stories On The Growing Surveillance State.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on August 20, 2013