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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Ron Paul Explains Why The 2,776 NSA Violations Are No Big Deal

Thanks to more documents leaked by Edward Snowden, this time to the Washington Post, we learned last week that a secret May 2012 internal audit by the NSA revealed 2,776 incidents of “unauthorized” collection of information on American citizens over the previous 12 months. They are routinely breaking their own rules and covering it up.

The Post article quotes an NSA spokesman assuring the paper that the NSA attempts to identify such problems “at the earliest possible moment.” But what happened to all those communications intercepted improperly in the meantime? The answer is, they were logged and stored anyway.

We also learned that the NSA routinely intercepts information from Americans while actually targeting foreigners, and that this is not even considered a violation. These intercepts are not deleted once discovered, even though they violate the government’s own standards. As the article reports, “once added to its databases, absent other restrictions, the communications of Americans may be searched freely.”

The Post article quotes an NSA official explaining that the thousands of unauthorized communications intercepts yearly are relatively insignificant. “You can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day. You look at a number in absolute terms that looks big, and when you look at it in relative terms, it looks a little different.”

So although the numbers of Americans who have had their information intercepted in violation of NSA’s own rules seems large, it is actually miniscule compared to the huge volume of our communications they intercept in total!

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let it go and stop being deflected from the real problems of this administration.

-ex NSA Guy

Anonymous said...

Its all for your protection- our brown shirt army- ooops excuse me.. I mean Homeland Security will protect you in the event of an false flag --.oops I mean emergency ... the usual suspects will be shot on sight or taken to our lovely fema campgrounds for interviews..so no need to panic.. we have all the weapons and ammo we need...just don't be caught in the streets because our jack booted patriots... oops.. I mean police force are armed and armored. Ready to attack and destroy any slim belief you have left in freedom..your tea bags and muskets will not stand a chance against our ears, eyes and gun lists...we will silence you all because our terror campaign has placed us in control...who needs a bill of rights to fight evil..so do not attempt to adjust your TV sets because we will google you till the cows come home and then have comcast and delmarva power shut you down ..dont worry if you did'nt do anything wrong this time....because you people... are next on our list...welcome to the new world order..were resistance is futile

Anonymous said...

What 8:17?
Like how you all in the NSA screwed up royally and allowed a devout muslim Communist become President?

You failed the American people.

Anonymous said...

Yeahright, NSAGUY. Idiot. Although RP is correct, there are too many low information voters plus those who just think that since they;re not doing anything bad....****. Christ. They are stealing your life along with everyone you communicate with, people! If, after the Boston bombings you were interested enough to wonder how the heck someone could make a bomb out of a pressure cooker, and had never heard of "cordite"(like me), and happened to try to educate yourself on the subject, ALL YOUR INTERNET SEARCHES are now saved, you are now a suspected terrorist, and most likely on the watch list.
These searches will be used against you at your trial, should one occur.

You need to act, folks. NOW.

Anonymous said...

Let me restate that. WE need to act, folks.