NSA Agents Spy On Their Ex-Girlfriends and Ex-Boyfriends So Often They Have a Word For It

Yeah I was just saying the other day, without any evidence for it (evidence is for fairies), that what the NSA wasn't yet copping to was all the spying agents did on their exes, just to keep tabs on them, or to see who they're dating now.

They do this so often there's a word for it: LOVEINT, like "HUMINT" (human intelligence) or "COMINT" (communications intelligence).

But of course no one ever gets fired. This is the US Government. This is a place to live life to the fullest, as Michael Scott would say.

In the wake of revelations last week that NSA had violated privacy rules on nearly 3,000 occasions in a one-year period, NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong emphasized in a conference call with reporters last week that those errors were unintentional. He did say that there have been “a couple” of willful violations in the past decade. He said he didn’t have the exact figures at the moment.

NSA said in a statement Friday that there have been “very rare” instances of willful violations of any kind in the past decade, and none have violated key surveillance laws. “NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities” and responds “as appropriate.”

The LOVEINT violations involved overseas communications, officials said, such as spying on a partner or spouse. In each instance, the employee was punished either with an administrative action or termination.

Either one or the other. Hm, I wonder which one it was.

This is why you have to fire such people: The minute they do this, they're telling you that they will in fact use billion dollar intelligence infrastructure to settle personal agendas.

And if you give them only an "administrative action," you're telling them that's understandable.

Most of the incidents, officials said, were self-reported. Such admissions can arise, for example, when an employee takes a polygraph tests as part of a renewal of a security clearance.

That's not really self-reported; that is confessed under polygraph. Further, that means the NSA itself isn't catching these things.

posted by Ace at 05:17 PM

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