At least 12 employees at the US National Security Agency have misused their power and spied on their current or former spouses and lovers over the past 10 years.
According to the spying agency™s internal watchdog, the employees have been using secret government surveillance tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of their spouses or lovers, Reuters reported.
At the request of Charles Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee™s top Republican, for a report on abuses of the NSA™s surveillance authority, the NSA Office of the Inspector General disclosed the practice which is known as œLOVEINT”.
In 2005, for instance, an NSA military member queried six email addresses of his former girlfriend on the very first day he attained access to the data collection system.
Also, a foreign woman employed by the US government became suspicious of her lover, who was an NSA civilian employee, when she found out that he was eavesdropping on her phone calls.
From 1998 to 2003, another man abused NSA databases and snooped on nine phone numbers of foreign women and collected communications of an American twice.
Following revelations by a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, which showed how the agency is collecting phone records and emails of both US nationals and foreigners, the spying agency came under harsh scrutiny and criticism.
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the revelations made so far are just œthe tip of the iceberg” of lax data safeguards.
“If you only focus on instances in which the NSA violated those laws, you’re missing the forest for the trees,” Jaffer said. “The bigger concern is not with willful violations of the law but rather with what the law itself allows.”
AT/ISH
Copyright: Press TV