Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:45:00 PM CEST
NSA analysts 'wilfully violated' surveillance systems, agency admits
The National Security Agency has admitted that some of its analysts deliberately abused its surveillance systems, with one analyst disciplined for using NSA resources to track a former spouse.
The agency said Friday it had found "very rare instances of wilful violations of NSA's authorities" as officials briefed reporters that various agents had used the NSA's controversial data monitoring capabilities to spy on love interests.
"NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and co-operates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate," the NSA said in a statement. "NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency's authorities."
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:42:00 PM CEST
NSA Officers Sometimes Spy on Love Interests
National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.
The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.
Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:41:00 PM CEST
Four ways the Guardian could have protected Snowden – by THE NSA
The Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger fears journalists – and, by extension, everyone – will be reduced to using pen and paper to avoid prying American and British spooks online.
And his reporters must fly around the world to hold face-to-face meetings with sources ("Not good for the environment, but increasingly the only way to operate") because they believe all their internet and phone chatter will be eavesdropped on by the NSA and GCHQ.
"It would be highly unadvisable for … any journalist … to regard any electronic means of communication as safe," he wrote.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:39:00 PM CEST
Guardian partners with New York Times over Snowden GCHQ files
The Guardian has struck a partnership with the New York Times which will give the US paper access to some of the sensitive cache of documents leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The arrangement was made when the Guardian was faced with demands from the UK government to hand over the GCHQ files it had in its possession.
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