> An internal NSA audit from May 2012 identified 2776 incidents i.e. violations of the rules or court orders for surveillance of Americans and foreign targets in the U.S. in the period from April 2011 through March 2012, while U.S. officials stressed that any mistakes are not intentional.
> The FISA Court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the U.S. government's vast spying programs has limited ability to do so and it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans.
"trust me bro"
> A legal opinion declassified on August 21, 2013, revealed that the NSA intercepted for three years as many as 56,000 electronic communications a year of Americans not suspected of having links to terrorism, before FISA court that oversees surveillance found the operation unconstitutional in 2011.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_di...
Hey at least it's covered under Section 702 though! They are policing themselves because the courts are too busy, but that's fine, and all those accidental times they broke the law, won't happen again, trust us! It was only 56,000 times they broke the law anyway!
Maybe it's paranoid to worry about such a thing. But then.. why do they need warrantless (and therefore untraceable) access to health information to begin with?
If ANY agent or associated personnel can make these requests, out of band and without a paper trail, how do we know there are no bad actors who may abuse the access?
We don't know. All principles of security say to assume there WILL be bad actors. In that case.. Therapy notes are great for blackmail. Medical conditions are great for assassination or simply sidelining a person temporarily with health issues.
And if a bad actor is caught? Their actions will be relegated to a secret court and never brought to light.
This is what bad clauses in our privacy laws have enabled for decades. A system that can be abused, invisibly, with very little oversight or accountability.
