Another story from the No-Shit-Sherlock Department.
El Reg is reporting that the NSA is admitting to what we already know:
The files have been heavily censored, but still manage to show that, either by accident or design, NSA staff routinely engaged in illegal surveillance with almost no comeback from management.
As the story points out, the report admitting this malfeasance was published when most people were not looking for news:
Slipping out unpleasant news at awkward times is a well-known PR practice – but the NSA has excelled itself by publishing on Christmas Eve internal reports detailing its unlawful surveillance. The agency dumped the docs online shortly after lunchtime on December 24, when most journalists are either heading home to their families or already drunk.
The report also points out one more reason why we should thank Edward Snowden:
The civil liberties body ACLU sued the NSA for the right to see the reports, and the courts sided with the group. The organization was only able to file the request thanks to knowing specifically what to ask for, thanks to internal documents leaked to the world by Edward Snowden.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 27 2014, @04:16PM
We'll keep doing it. STFU.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Saturday December 27 2014, @05:12PM
USA! USA! USA!
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 27 2014, @05:21PM
America
America
America, fuck yeah!
Coming again to save the mother fucking day, yeah
America, fuck yeah!
Freedom is the only way, yeah
Terrorist your game is through 'cause now you have to answer too
America, fuck yeah!
So lick my butt and suck on my balls
America, fuck yeah!
What you gonna to do when we come for you now
It's the dream that we all share
It's the hope for tomorrow
Fuck yeah!
McDonalds, fuck yeah!
Wal-Mart, fuck yeah!
The Gap, fuck yeah!
Baseball, fuck yeah!
NFL, fuck yeah!
Rock and roll, fuck yeah!
The Internet, fuck yeah!
Slavery, fuck yeah!
Fuck yeah!
Starbucks, fuck yeah!
Disney world, fuck yeah!
Porno, fuck yeah!
Valium, fuck yeah!
Reebok's, fuck yeah!
Fake tits, fuck yeah!
Sushi, fuck yeah!
Taco Bell, fuck yeah!
Rodeos, fuck yeah!
Bed bath and beyond
Fuck yeah, fuck yeah
Liberty, fuck yeah!
White Slips, fuck yeah!
The Alamo, fuck yeah!
Band-aids, fuck yeah!
Las Vegas, fuck yeah!
Christmas, fuck yeah!
Immigrants, fuck yeah!
Popeye, fuck yeah!
Demarcates, fuck yeah!
Republicans
Fuck yeah, fuck yeah
Sportsmanship
Books
America
America, fuck yeah!
Coming again to save the mother fucking day, yeah
America, fuck yeah!
Freedom is the only way, yeah
Terrorist your game is through 'cause now you have to answer too
America, fuck yeah!
So lick my butt and suck on my balls
America, fuck yeah!
What you gonna to do when we come for you now
It's the dream that we all share
It's the hope for tomorrow
Fuck yeah!
McDonalds, fuck yeah!
Wal-Mart, fuck yeah!
The Gap, fuck yeah!
Baseball, fuck yeah!
NFL, fuck yeah!
Rock and roll, fuck yeah!
The Internet, fuck yeah!
Slavery, fuck yeah!
Fuck yeah!
Starbucks, fuck yeah!
Disney world, fuck yeah!
Porno, fuck yeah!
Valium, fuck yeah!
Reebok's, fuck yeah!
Fake tits, fuck yeah!
Sushi, fuck yeah!
Taco Bell, fuck yeah!
Rodeos, fuck yeah!
Bed bath and beyond
Fuck yeah, fuck yeah
Liberty, fuck yeah!
White Slips, fuck yeah!
The Alamo, fuck yeah!
Band-aids, fuck yeah!
Las Vegas, fuck yeah!
Christmas, fuck yeah!
Immigrants, fuck yeah!
Popeye, fuck yeah!
Demarcates, fuck yeah!
Republicans
Fuck yeah, fuck yeah
Sportsmanship
Books
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 27 2014, @05:17PM
So, first NORAD is in charge of tracking Santa's flight path [wikipedia.org] and now the NSA is handling the Naughty and Nice list.
I guess they took that whole War-on-Christmas meme a little too literally.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday December 27 2014, @06:14PM
One would expect heads to roll over such unconstitutional activities. A national agency that turns rogue on the population should be enough to create a massive public outcry and send a lot of people to jail. But I bet you anything things will carry on being business as usual in the US of A, due to public apathy and corrupt powers that be.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 27 2014, @07:19PM
Heads won't roll. Wrists won't be slapped. Worst case is toys taken away (for a while).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday December 28 2014, @02:50PM
In a real democracy, one would expect that people who committed thoroughly documented crimes against humanity in direct violation of both the law and treaty obligations would be arrested and tried. Instead, a large percentage of the population thinks this is a completely OK situation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Saturday December 27 2014, @07:16PM
The write up at the Register seems to suggest the report contains mostly example of misbehaving employees doing things that they weren't supposed to be doing, and which they were caught at, and punished.
Totally unmentioned are the systematic approved and sanctioned invasions of privacy and spying on US citizens for no reason at all, which is what these people were hired to do. So the NSA admits to a string of trivial misdemeanors to divert attention from the fact that their basement is full of bodies?
How surprising it that so many "unintentional or unauthorized" database queries about uS Citizens happen when the databases themselves are not supposed to be maintained on US Citizens at all?
TFS omitted the link to the actual report. The link is below but I guarantee if you access it your visit will be logged.
Notice the cynical bastards use https for their web server. I would use something like the Epic Browser or TOR if you want to look at it.
I obfuscated it just so pre-fetch browsers don't log your visit just by visiting this SN page.
Xttps://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/IntelligenceOversightBoard.shtml
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday December 27 2014, @11:15PM
If you ain't on the NSA's list you ain't doing it right as an American. Feed the F'ing machine! If everybody is on 'the list' it is as meaningless as everyone getting a trophy.
I'm totally ok with Snowden leaking most of the details on domestic spying. And just as convinced he is a traitor for the other info he dumped. I'd like to see an elite commando team drag his ass back to America so we could hang a Medal of Freedom around his neck for the one and then strangle him with it for the other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday December 27 2014, @11:29PM
Actually I he claimed to go out of his way to prevent "dumping" and thing really harmful. No undercover spies were outed.
Nobody died, and no foreign heads of state were surprised (regardless of their public sputtering). I agree with the Medal of Freedom, and a full Pardon. Carve him onto Mt Rushmore. The man is a patriot.
What you fail to realize is the fucking machine has the power to consume us all without choking, and any pathetic attempts to overwhelm it with trivia will not slow it down at all.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday December 27 2014, @11:58PM
They ain't ten feet tall or demigods. They are idiots with virtually unlimited resources to buy supercomputers and other toys. If 'they' were half as competent as you fear, Snowden would not just have been dead already, he would have never been able to do what he did. Really, how smart is it to allow junior system admins to access the family jewels and copy it all out to portable drives? Hollywood usually controls access better than that, and the banks certainly do. I don't really think they are even evil, they are convinced they are doing what they have to do.... which is of course makes them the most dangerous of all.
And yes Snowden leaked information about our spying outside the US. The CIA and NSA were spying? You don't say! Doh! It's pretty much implied in the very NAME. If they weren't spying they should have been eliminated from the budget! They are supposed to spy, and spy as hard as they can; just like every other nation state spies just as hard as it can. Good, bad, normal notions of morality doesn't apply as it is inherent in the nature of the beast. Since we can't eliminate the nation-state at our current level of knowledge we have to accept that it is what it is and accept they will do as they must. This understanding of the nature of the State is why I favor reducing the size and scope of the State to the greatest extent possible, btw.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 28 2014, @12:51AM
> They are supposed to spy, and spy as hard as they can;
That's begging the question. No they aren't supposed to do that. They are supposed to spy on what matters, not on everybody. Scooping up every call record in foreign countries is just as wasteful, ineffective and dangerous to public order as is doing it domestically. Cisco and IBM didn't lose domestic sales because they were seen as being NSA stooges, they lost that business in foreign markets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 28 2014, @03:02AM
maybe using archive.org to read it is better then?
http://web.archive.org/web/20141226234549/https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/IntelligenceOversightBoard.shtml [archive.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01 2015, @09:29PM
As that is a regular http URL it can be tracked by your ISP or anyone whose equipment it passes through, and that is assuming the NSA don't have some backdoor they use to check out archive.org's logs. Still would be prudent to use TOR or another trustworthy anonymising proxy to visit it if you are worried about potentially being on an NSA list.