Audit Shows NSA Broke Privacy Rules 1000′s of Times Since 2008 … Bulk of Infractions Are “Unauthorized Surveillance of Americans”

NAH, the NSA is not spying on us. Only if you count the thousands of times that an audit showed they actually did …

The WAPO reports, an NSA audit dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. As The Hill states, the report is based on an internal audit and other documents leaked to the news organization by Edward Snowden. In other words, had Snowden not spill the beans, “We the People” would have had no knowledge of any of the NSA’s spying on Americans.

But its just a phony scandal.

VIDEO – CNN – CNN mocks Obama’s “Independent” group to review the NSA

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. [...]

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA’s compliance record. In June, after promising to explain the NSA’s record in “as transparent a way as we possibly can,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole described extensive safeguards and oversight that keep the agency in check. “Every now and then, there may be a mistake,” Cole said in congressional testimony.

The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Every now and then they make a mistake? 2776 TIMES!!!

But wait … Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers? He was wrong. Or was he purposely lying? Looks like Obama just got caught again with his hand in the “lying” cookie jar.

At a news conference Friday, President Obama insisted that the threat of NSA abuses was mostly theoretical:

If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.

What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court].

But as Weasel Zippers opines, this is just a phony scandal, even though the NSA actually did spy on Americans.