NSA Releases Reports on US Surveillance

The National Security Agency has released its quarterly and annual reports on its surveillance practices revealing incidents of illegal misconduct that violated the constitutional rights of US citizens.

Bloomberg reports that the time span of the reports is from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013. The reports were released after the American Civil Liberties Union issued a Freedom of Information Act request for the information.

The NSA chose to release the information at 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Some of the violations of US citizens' constitutional rights were accidental, while others were deliberate.

An example of an accidental violation would be someone requesting information on a target they did not know they were unauthorized to target, or simply clicking on the wrong data field in the course of a day's work. Another example would be analysts sending information to other analysts when the information should not have been shared.

One example of a deliberate violation was a female analyst who conducted surveillance on her husband and phone numbers associated with him. There were two other cases such as this.

One case saw a husband demoted and two months' pay garnished for snooping on his wife. In another case, a civilian employee quit before an investigation into the matter could be completed.

Bloomberg reports that the documents do not have any names or other identifying information. Bloomberg also says that the documents are so heavily redacted that many cases can not be fully understood, and it is unclear exactly what incidents broke the law, and which did not.

The NSA has been under intense public scrutiny around the globe since 2013 when Edward Snowden released documents outlining the disturbing level of surveillance the NSA conducts on US citizens digital and telephonic communications.