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Telecoms Gave the NSA More Data Than It Requested

posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 02 2018, @11:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the here-you-go dept.

takyon writes:

NSA deletes hundreds of millions of call records over privacy violations

The NSA unfortunately has a long history of violating privacy rules, although this time the agency might not be entirely to blame. The NSA is deleting hundreds of millions of call and text message data records (collected since 2015) after learning of "technical irregularities" that led to receiving records it wasn't supposed to obtain under the USA Freedom Act. General counsel Glenn Gerstell told the New York Times in an interview that "one or more" unnamed telecoms had responded to data requests for targets by sending logs that included not just the relevant data, but records for people who hadn't been in contact with the targets. As it was "infeasible" to comb through all the data and find just the authorized data, the NSA decided to wipe everything.

[...] The companies involved have "addressed" the cause of the problem for data going forward, the NSA said.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:20AM (3 children)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:20AM (#701669)

    They probably wanted to be good little corporate stooges/snitches, after all that is how you get those big fat government paychecks, porkbellies and handouts. Or it was the complete opposite, they wanted to just obfuscate the interested parts by drowning them in useless shit data. Or they are just that incompetent and couldn't really be bothered, send it all and let the NSA sort it out. Perhaps a little of all each and all of the above.

    Considering the corporations have now changed their tune and made suitable adjustments to the process I guess it was not the option where they might have been trying to look out for their customers; or perhaps the NSA is the customer and they are ...

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:07AM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:07AM (#701687) Journal

    I read an article recently, I think it was in the submission queue, about AT&T. It seems they are the worst of the worst when it comes to granting the NSA anything they request. They will go above and beyond said requests, in an apparent hope of currying favor. The other Telcos sometimes resist the NSA's demands, but never AT&T.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:47AM (1 child)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:47AM (#701704) Journal

      Something like this?

      In each of [eight] cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. [Evidence indicates] that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory. The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

      - https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ [theintercept.com]