The internal files of the US National Security Agency (NSA) show one of the agency™s employee spied on nine women without detection for six years.
The employee of the main US government surveillance organization was able to secretly intercept the phone calls of nine foreign women for six years without ever being detected by his managers, NSA™s internal watchdog has revealed.
This odd spying case came to light only after one of the women, who happened to be a US government employee, told a colleague that she suspected the man – with whom she was having a relationship – was listening to her calls, the British daily The Guardian has reported.
The NSA’s inspector general, General George Ellard, wrote a letter to a leading Congress member releasing details of the spying.
In his letter, Ellard has confirmed the existence of 12 substantiated cases. Earlier, US media reported that at least a dozen NSA employees used secret government spying tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of their current or former spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends over the last decade.
The shocking point in these 12 documented cases is that limited disciplinary measures have been taken against NSA staff and the abusers didn™t face any legal or disciplinary action. In seven cases, individuals guilty of abusing their powers resigned or retired before disciplinary action could be taken, The Guardian reports, while œtwo civilian employees kept their jobs – and, it appears, their security clearance – and escaped with only a written warning after they were found to have conducted unauthorized interceptions.”
The abuses did not result in a single prosecution, even though more than half of the cases were referred to the Department of Justice.
US media have claimed evidence of thousands of privacy violations. But NSA’s director, Gen Keith Alexander rejected the claims saying abusing the agency™s powerful monitoring tools were œwith very rare exception” unintentional mistakes.
Alexander also said that œToday, NSA has a privacy compliance program any leader of a large, complex organization would be proud of.”
But a recent New York Times™ report flies in the face of Alexander™s privacy compliance claim. On Saturday it reported that the NSA had, since 2010, used data it gathered to map some Americans’ œsocial connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information”.
Officials didn™t say how many Americans have been caught up in the program, including people involved in no wrongdoing.
Documents disclosed by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, who fled to Russia earlier this year, brought to surface previously unknown US government spying programs that sneaked into Americans™ phone calls and Internet data.
The spying activities have prompted concern about the intrusions into Americans’ privacy which are usually carried out in the name of protecting against terrorist and other foreign attacks.
DB/DB
Copyright: Press TV