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N.S.A. Calls Violations of Privacy ‘Minuscule’
N.S.A. Calls Violations of Privacy ‘Minuscule’
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — The top National Security Agency official charged with making sure analysts comply with rules protecting the privacy of Americans pushed back on Friday against reports that the N.S.A. had frequently violated privacy rules, after the publication of a leaked internal audit showing that there had been 2,776 such “incidents” in a one-year period...John DeLong, the N.S.A. director of compliance, said that the number of mistakes by the agency was extremely low compared with its overall activities. The report showed about 100 errors by analysts in making queries of databases of already-collected communications data; by comparison, he said, the agency performs about 20 million such queries each month.
Mr. DeLong, speaking to reporters on a conference call, also argued that the overwhelming majority of the violations were unintentional human or technical errors and that the existence of the report showed that the agency’s efforts to detect and correct violations of the rules were robust. He said the number of willful errors was “minuscule,” involving a “couple over the past decade.”
<...>
Mr. DeLong emphasized that the majority of the 2,776 incidents — 1,904 of them, according to the audit — were in a category that did not involve Americans, but rather foreigners abroad whose cellphones were being wiretapped. When they traveled to the United States, where individual warrants are required, the system did not immediately stop recording the calls.
With such “roamers,” he said, the agency would try to detect the change “as soon as we can,” and then stop recording the calls and remove the information from its databases, “such that analysts may never see information collected while that person was in the United States.”
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/us/nsa-calls-violations-of-privacy-minuscule.html
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — The top National Security Agency official charged with making sure analysts comply with rules protecting the privacy of Americans pushed back on Friday against reports that the N.S.A. had frequently violated privacy rules, after the publication of a leaked internal audit showing that there had been 2,776 such “incidents” in a one-year period...John DeLong, the N.S.A. director of compliance, said that the number of mistakes by the agency was extremely low compared with its overall activities. The report showed about 100 errors by analysts in making queries of databases of already-collected communications data; by comparison, he said, the agency performs about 20 million such queries each month.
Mr. DeLong, speaking to reporters on a conference call, also argued that the overwhelming majority of the violations were unintentional human or technical errors and that the existence of the report showed that the agency’s efforts to detect and correct violations of the rules were robust. He said the number of willful errors was “minuscule,” involving a “couple over the past decade.”
<...>
Mr. DeLong emphasized that the majority of the 2,776 incidents — 1,904 of them, according to the audit — were in a category that did not involve Americans, but rather foreigners abroad whose cellphones were being wiretapped. When they traveled to the United States, where individual warrants are required, the system did not immediately stop recording the calls.
With such “roamers,” he said, the agency would try to detect the change “as soon as we can,” and then stop recording the calls and remove the information from its databases, “such that analysts may never see information collected while that person was in the United States.”
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/us/nsa-calls-violations-of-privacy-minuscule.html
67 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
a fallacious appeal to authority. 
Instead of the big numbers? 
