NSA surveillance program has had compliance problems, Clapper says

[Catherina]

NSA surveillance program has had compliance problems, intelligence official says

By Peter Wallsten

The Obama administration’s top intelligence official acknowledged Friday that there have been “a number of compliance problems” in the government program that has collected phone data on millions of Americans.
...

Clapper made the statements in a four-page letter responding to a series of questions posed to him last month by a bipartisan group of 26 senators.

The lawmakers, accusing the Obama administration of making misleading statements in the past regarding the records it was collecting with the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, had asked Clapper to list any “violations of the court orders permitting this bulk collection, or of the rules governing access to these records.”

...

“However, there have been no findings of any intentional or bad-faith violations,” he wrote. “These problems generally involved human error or highly sophisticated technology issues related to NSA’s compliance with particular aspects of the Court’s orders.”

Clapper’s letter did not provide details but offered to give lawmakers more information in a classified setting. A spokesman for Clapper declined to elaborate.

...

..(Clapper) described underlying legal opinions as “properly classified.”

Wyden said: “That just takes your breath away.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nsa-surveillance-program-has-had-compliance-problems-official-says/2013/07/26/f64c9820-f63d-11e2-a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story.html

Lots of word parsing in the letter but Wyden has already proven to be up to the job.

[KG]

1. no shit.

it's beyond delusional to think entities like the NSA feel bound by supposed legal impediments like congressional oversight, warrants and laws.

[Catherina]

2. Thanks. You cut right to the chase.

Wyden does too but he uses more words lol

In response to Clapper’s denial that additional bulk data was being collected, Wyden said, as he has before, that the government’s authority is “limitless.”

[zeemike]

7. the government’s authority is “limitless.”

Now that should send a chill down your spine.

[Laelth]

3. Well, this is better than nothing.

Typically, our spooks stonewall, and in doing so they give the distinct impression that they are not bound to respond to attempts at Congressional oversight. This, at least, is a step in the right direction.

-Laelth

[hobbit709]

4. Master of the understatement there.

[DCBob]

5. I suspect there will be changes to the program to help minimize the "compliance problems"..

and I also suspect that will satisfy most members of congress.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. Far more likely they will find better ways to hide the abuse in legalistic pentagonese terminology.

SOP for a system like this one. Fixing it would require unplugging what they already use and that is something they never do. The primary benefit of this arrangement is that private corporations receive huge sums for operating it and have few if any operational controls over how it is run. Where is the incentive to foster actual change in that process?

You may remember under Cheney the office of public (dis) information the pentagon once told us was disbanded. As it later turned out while the sign on the door was changed and the personnel inside moved to other locations it was really bait and switch. The same function was relabeled as were the staff positions while the project continued under an innocuous title and below congressional radar. Once again no incentive for real change and no way to see it happening... Very recently the same project was approved and we now have a visible office which supplies propaganda directly to the news stream.

[DCBob]

13. Something seen as significant will have to be done now that the cat is out the bag.

Some tweaks to ensure better compliance will likely be good enough to satisfy most members of congress.

BTW, Cheney is not running the show anymore.

[Ford_Prefect]

14. It will be the same outfit under a revised Logo. Practices that have not changed since Laos 1964

are not likely to now. What they will do is add one more layer of obfuscation with a sincere sounding apology and then carry on as before. The Hydra grows ever larger.

[DCBob]

15. Disagree. The Bush/Cheney outfit couldnt care less..

remember the Cheney infamous.. "So?".

[Ford_Prefect]

17. You're talking about the frontman not the agency. The tail has wagged the dog for a very long time.

Who do you think assisted Reagan's people to get rid of Carter? There is what passes for public debate under each administration, and what is actually done.

I do not mean that Cheney's actions and goals were not different than Obama's. I mean that the agency long ago divorced itself from mundane interference by what it views as temporary tenants of the oval office. BCCI made that clear enough to anyone who was paying attention. Clapper is only the latest public face for what is going on, whatever it says in the door to his office.

[DCBob]

19. No doubt the agency gets much of what it wants claiming national security and secrecy issues but..

but there is also no doubt the agency priorities and activities are greatly influenced by those in the executive branch. Recall Cheney spent a great deal of time over at Langley in face to face meetings with the heads of the CIA. Those werent just boring status updates given to VP. Cheney was making sure they followed his orders and that there wouldn't be any possibility of the content of those meetings being captured by phone or email records.

[Savannahmann]

6. I've mentioned this a couple times.

There is no database that isn't abused. The famed NCIC of lore and legend. Every cop, secretary, and janitor has access to the computers linked to the NCIC. So anyone can, and often does punch names in to see what comes up. Fathers punch in the names of their children's girlfriends or boyfriends. Some punch in prospective dates, to see if they have a record. Some punch in neighbors, or others.

I was told a story once. A secretary at a prison who was in the habit of punching names of her dates into the computer to see if they were crooks got bored, and for shits and giggles punched in the name of a man on the Most Wanted list just to see what would come up. The prison was swamped with phone calls, and federal agents within an hour. Everyone screaming that they couldn't let the guy go. BTW this plus a number of books including Liddy's tome (I told you I read many books from many different authors to get a little better understanding on how people think, and what happened) are my evidence for my belief that every database is abused.

So I KNOW that the NCIC is abused, people run through there by those with access just to see what comes up. So why would we believe that the NSA database is not abused? You have a wife/husband. You think things are going fine in the marriage, so you punch them into the system to see who they are calling, or emailing, or texting. You get to read the texts, the emails, and possibly even get synopsis of the phone conversations.

Doesn't affect me you say? I'm not married/dating/involved with a NSA douchebag so it wouldn't matter to me. If they are able to do whatever they want with this information, then history clearly shows they will. Nixon was blasted by the press for his infringements of the Constitution. The CIA report Family Jewels (I told you I read a lot of different things) highlights a number of these violations.

Now, why do we insist on a Sex Offenders list? Because offenders traditionally offend again. Especially sex offenders. So we want the public to know who is living in their neighborhoods. But we don't list violators of the databases the same way. We give them extraordinary power, and we never hear about the common, everyday violations. Imagine your outrage, you meet a really hip guy or girl, and you want to get to know him/her better. You exchange phone numbers, and ten minutes after you leave the club/bar/grocery store, he/she is running you down through the database to see if you are someone she/he wants to know.

Sorry, but I'm opposed to it, because I KNOW that they abuse the databases. It's human nature, and we can't pretend that we are something we aren't. If you are given the power to check anyone out, you will do it. Not at first, not on your first day on the job, but within a few weeks, or a few months, you'll be punching your Daughter's boyfriend in and checking out the databases history on his porn browsing. We are humans, and we'll look eventually. Power after all corrupts us all. The more power we have, the more corrupted we'll become.

Think about that my friends. Consider it, and then tell me you're fine with the databases, because either A) You believe that everyone involved, not just most of them, but all of them, are of the highest caliber and would never abuse the database. Or B) You don't mind the abuses, because they are working to protect us from the shadowy forces that are trying to destroy us for some reason or another.

[reusrename]

11. These abuses don't seem all that dangerous to society as a whole.

It's the proper use of the system, for its intended purpose, that has my hair on fire.

The system's whole purpose is to control dissent. That's it. That's what it is for.

So even when used correctly, without any abuses, it's something that should terrify folks.

[Savannahmann]

12. My point was to discredit the claim of the supporters

That there would be no abuses of the database.

I also have many, and often stated objections to the system, even if by some miracle, and it would be a miracle akin to the Old Testament Miracles, the system was not abused.

[Waiting For Everyman]

9. Reading between the lines...

Wyden, in an interview late Friday, said intelligence officials could “definitely” reveal more information about the problems without compromising national security. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden said he was aware of the details but could not disclose them because of classification rules. “The intelligence agencies constantly come back to the refrain about how careful they are,” he said. “This certainly raises substantial questions about that argument.”

Wyden has warned in the past that the court’s secret interpretations of the Patriot Act gave the government the authority to collect other forms of bulk data, including health information and credit card records.

If I'm reading it right, Wyden is saying a couple of things: 1) that the court orders regarding bulk data collection have been violated; 2) that medical and financial bulk records have been authorized and collected; and 3) this part is more nebulous, but he seems to be implying that those records got loose and went somewhere they weren't supposed to.

My wild guess would be that some contractor (oops!) got hold of them. And what I would expect to happen from that, is that we may find out that they might have been sold.

Beyond that, Wyden's "breathtaking" comment is saying that Clapper is outright lying, knowing that Wyden knows he is lying. (Yes, that does take some nerve, doesn't it?)

Bottom line: I think this scandal is about to get much bigger real soon.

[Ford_Prefect]

10. Not Bloody likely. They will bury it even deeper if possible- see #8 above.

I assume they operate like any magic act: distracting us by showing something we believe we can recognize while something else entirely is going on out of sight.

[hootinholler]

16. And so the limited hang out begins

Hopefully it won't put a cap on the issues.

Which brazillionaire evil overlord has bought someone with access to this? Has anyone opened a bank account since the patriot act? All of the ID stuff required is required by the PA. My banker knows me personally and apologized for having to make me jump through those hoops a few years ago. Before the PA I could have opened the account with a phone call, swinging by to simply sign the paperwork.

[DirkGently]

18. Secret problems, of course. That must remain secret for secrecy's sake. n/t