The document also states they acknowledged that they have ingested data they shouldn't and don't have a timeline on when, if ever, they'll purge it. Apparently the purge process has begun, but the not having a timeline to remove seems to read "best effort, if we don't get it all oh well". The real response should be: we received tainted data and are required to remove it all for that timeframe and rerequest all of it within N days. If you're Equifax and accidentally send out everyone's SSN to someone requesting their credit history you don't just use an excuse that you don't know how to remove it. You're obliged to remove it all. There doesn't seem to be a process in place for this. Convenient oversight.
Taking into consideration how historical evidence has shown just how toothless proper channels are when improper behavior aligns with leadership goals and taking into account that the government has a long history of trying to use technicalities to outsource work that wouldn't be legal if done in house, I think we are beyond any benefit of the doubt.
I do agree we should be sure to inform people correctly. "NSA spying on Americans continues to function in a way that breaks legal limits while giving plausible deniability" does seem a bit better a title.
But the ACLU is a better spokesman than I:
>"These documents provide further evidence that the NSA has consistently been unable to operate the call detail record program within the bounds of the law," the ACLU said in a letter to Congress this week lobbying for an end to the program.
For me and the vast majority of the world population the distinction doesn't matter, because according to US law the NSA is allowed to spy on us as they please. Of course, this practice is illegal were we live, but that's not going to bother them.
Who knew that was along the lines of what happened.
Take away from this is, an external party from the NSA can make a mistake and the media will still blame the NSA.
But then security has always been one of those area's in which you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Turns out it is also susceptible to being dammed for others mistakes. Mistakes which end up exposing security operations even.
Why do we think mass surveillance is ok as long as it is constrained to the 96%+ of people who aren’t American?
What the NSA does is terrible. You should be scared of them and their actions even when they are operating within the “legal” bounds of section 215. This is never what the author of section 215 intended. This is why the DNI lied under oath to congress to cover up the program.
Seems like a major screwup like this is pretty normal for the NSA. Or at least they execute it with aplomb.
One doesn't just oopsie into the Statsi's wet dream and it should be regarded with the incredulity of someome claiming they "accidentally" molested an entire elementary school.
AFGSC (formerly Strategic Air Command)'s job is to provide a credible nuclear deterrent while not losing nukes or irradiating Americans.
Let's imagine if the NSA were in charge of the nukes:
- "Whoops, someone stole a bunch of our nukes. But those were old nukes—we have better nukes now."
- "Whoops, turns out we were nuking American cities. But Congressional oversight committees knew about it."
Seriously, I can't even facepalm hard enough. I guess security is hard—everyone's annoyed with you until there's an attack and then everyone's blaming you for not annoying them more to prevent it.
>These documents provide further evidence that the NSA has consistently been unable to operate the call detail record program within the bounds of the law. -ACLU
>NSA identified additional data integrity and compliance concerns… The issues have been addressed and reported to congressional oversight committees. -NSA spokesperson
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bo...
I'm pretty sure the NSA also eavesdrops on friendly foreign actors. I'm also sure that the friendly foreign actors aren't pleased with it. I don't know why this isn't taken into account in foreign US policy.
Or just go with a straight up accurate headline. "The NSA Have Again Been Caught Lying Again and Have Zero Credibility"
Accurate, unbiased and factual. You don't do middle ground between good and evil and call it balance. Facts are facts whatever you think of them.
An opinion would be the NSA needs to be shut down, disbanded and a new department setup with clear guidelines for anything the NSA was doing that is deemed to be still worthwhile. Agreeing or not with that opinion doesn't alter the facts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302240 and marked it off-topic.
What exactly is real news to you, then? I think the WSJ / Bloomberg are pretty much as good as media gets.
Or if you think no media outlet is "real" and they're all motivated by profit, then that just means your definition of "real news" is entirely inaccurate.
When in reality we are talking about surveillance [0] and surveillance doesn't work with "probes", it's based on constant monitoring and thus requires massive infrastructure [1].
So when was this supposedly stopped, to make it a "second time"?
