NSA (Loveint Scandal) Channels Agency’s Enormous Eavesdropping Power To Spy On Love Interests (#NSAlovepoems, #NSAromcom)

National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said. NSA (Loveint Scandal) Channels Agency’s Enormous Eavesdropping Power To Spy On Love Interests (#NSAlovepoems, #NSAromcom)

The story created a stir on Twitter, with two related hashtags gaining traction. First, #NSAlovepoems, and also #NSAromcom.

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.

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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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The “LOVEINT” examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees, officials said.

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.

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.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA told her committee about a set of “isolated cases” that have occurred about once a year for the last 10 years, where NSA personnel have violated NSA procedures.

She said “in most instances” the violations didn’t involve an American’s personal information. She added that she’s seen no evidence that any of the violations involved the use of NSA’s domestic surveillance infrastructure, which is governed by a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Clearly, any case of noncompliance is unacceptable, but these small numbers of cases do not change my view that NSA takes significant care to prevent any abuses and that there is a substantial oversight system in place,” she said. “When errors are identified, they are reported and corrected.”

“It is alarming to know that the possibility of employees engaging in such behavior turns out to be very real,” said Sen. Charles Grassely (R., Iowa), who asked the NSA’s inspector general for a public accounting, which he made public last week (PDF).

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) was similarly dismayed: “I was deeply disappointed, and hurt really, to see some had looked at their girlfriend’s messages.”

NSA (Loveint Scandal) Channels Agency’s Enormous Eavesdropping Power To Spy On Love Interests (#NSAlovepoems, #NSAromcom)

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander publicly detailed the 12 instances in the past decade where NSA employees willfully violated NSA policies or the law, most of which involved spying on love interests.

Most of the incidents were carried out overseas, though one episode of spousal spying was committed within the U.S. He also offered his own statistic: NSA employees were three times more likely to die in a war zone than to commit a willful violation.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii) wanted to know what NSA was doing to catch and prevent electronic stalking.

Transparency, Gen. Alexander reported. “Highlighting the punishments that go along with this really will help cut that down,” he said, noting that he had circulated to employees the same information that the inspector general had provided to Mr. Grassley.

There was no word on whether he plans to provide public accountings in the future.

NSA (Loveint Scandal) Channels Agency’s Enormous Eavesdropping Power To Spy On Love Interests (#NSAlovepoems, #NSAromcom)

The shadowy National Security Agency has revealed that a small number of the agency’s employees used their vast international surveillance powers — meant to track potential terrorists and protect the American homeland — to check up on their crushes or significant others.

In nearly a dozen incidents over the last decade that take the term “cyber-stalking” to a whole new level, NSA employees broke NSA rules to enter phone numbers or email addresses associated with their romantic interests, in one case an ex, into vast databases to see to whom they were talking, according to the agency’s Inspector General.

READ: The NSA’s Rules for Accidentally Spying on You

The incidents, 12 in total and most romantic in nature, were revealed in response to a request from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who asked last month that the NSA provide more information on “the intentional and willful misuse of surveillance authorities by NSA employees.”

For months major news organizations have reported never-before-seen details of the NSA’s incredible surveillance powers — both foreign and domestic – based on a trove of intelligence documents allegedly stolen by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden, charged with espionage-related crimes in the U.S., is currently living in Russia on temporary asylum.

In one 2004 case revealed by the NSA IG, a female NSA employee investigated a foreign telephone number she had discovered in her husband’s cell phone contacts because she suspected him of being unfaithful.

In another in 2005, on the first day he was granted access to the relevant NSA databases, a male “subject” searched six different e-mail addresses belonging to his ex-girlfriend.

He testified that he was just doing it to try out the system, the NSA IG said. In other cases, the employees in question said they had queried unauthorized numbers out of their own security concerns. Another employee said he tracked his own home number and his girlfriend’s number “out of curiosity.”

The IG, George Ellard, said his office currently has two investigations underway into the purported misuse of the NSA’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities and are looking into another allegation “for possible investigation.”

NSA (Loveint Scandal) Channels Agency’s Enormous Eavesdropping Power To Spy On Love Interests (#NSAlovepoems, #NSAromcom)

…If it proves so, then loving leaks through phones; Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with drones. #NSALovePoems

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth loop; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt, we snoop #NSAlovepoems

Roses are red, Your underwear is blue. Not that I looked, But I could if I wanted to. #NSAlovepoems

My surveillance is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. #NSAlovepoems

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime But at my back I always hear My supervisor hurrying near #NSAlovepoems

“The roses had the look of roses that are looked at, And stored, and cross-indexed, and subject to minimization” #NSAlovepoems

Roses are red, violets are blue, we’ve rooted your webcam, we are recording you. #nsaLOVEpoems

#NSAlovepoems Star light, Star bright First voicemail I hear tonight

hey now, so this is crazy i have your number no need to call me baby #NSAlovepoems #LOVEINT

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name should be entered into a database of known aliases. #NSAlovepoems

Roses are red, you are blue, coz your emails are all read, and your privacy is gone too #NSAlovepoems

Met her, date her, Not much later, She finds out what I meant ’bout keeping her content. #NSAlovepoems

Bridget Jones’s Diary, & her Facebook, plus her phone calls & all of her emails #NSAromcom

Look Who’s Talking! #NSARomCom

I Know Exactly What You Did Last Summer #NSAromcom

Four Readings and a Numeral #NSAromcom

Four Weddings and An Imprisonment In Guantanamo #NSARomCom

When Harry Met Sally he tracked her through the web to make sure she was wife material first #NSAromcom

The Postman Always Opens Your Mail Twice #NSAromcom

We’ve got your mail #NSARomCom

He’s Not That Into Your Email #NSAromcom

It Happened One Night and We Saw the Whole Thing #NSAromcom

My Big Fat Greek Wedding Mailing List Has Exposed Hundreds to Be Treated as Foreign Agents #NSAromcom

NSA Offers Details On ‘LOVEINT’ (That’s Spying On Lovers, Exes)

One NSA worker did it “out of curiosity,” another for “practice.” Agency’s letter in response to query from US senator gives glimpse of romance-related — and other — misuses of surveillance system.

Why bother with boyfriend-vetting sites like ReportYourEx.com when you’ve got the ginormous spying resources of the NSA at your fingertips?

That seems to have been the thinking of at least one intelligence worker with the US National Security Agency, who, an NSA letter suggests, regularly tapped the agency’s now-infamous phone-data collection program to screen people she met at cocktail parties and the like.

The overseas staffer “tasked the telephone number of her foreign-national boyfriend and other foreign nationals and…reviewed the resultant collection,” the letter reads, adding later: “The subject asserted that it was her practice to enter foreign national phone numbers she obtained in social settings into the [NSA] system to ensure that she was not talking to ‘shady characters.’”

These intriguing, fill-in-the-rest-of-the-narrative-as-you-see-fit details come in a just-published letter from NSA Inspector General George Ellard to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In August, Grassley asked Ellard to provide details on instances documented by the inspector general’s office in which NSA personnel “intentionally and willfully abused their surveillance authorities.” The request followed media reports of workers with access to NSA surveillance setups spying on their lovers.

The practice reportedly has its own spycraft nickname: “LOVEINT,” a play on acronyms like SIGINT (for the sort of signals, or communications, intelligence that’s handled by the NSA) and HUMINT (for the human intelligence that’s carried out by agencies like the CIA).

Grassley’s request also followed various other revelations of NSA missteps that have surfaced since June, when former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked a trove of documents that reveal the extent of the shadowy agency’s surveillance systems.

Ellard’s response to Grassley opens by saying that “Since 1 January 2003, there have been 12 substantiated instances of intentional misuse of the signals intelligence (SIGINT) authorities” of the NSA.

(An internal NSA audit leaked by Snowden showed many other incidents of various types — an average of seven per day — though these were, the agency says, mainly inadvertent.) From there, the Ellard letter gives brief rundowns of those dozen cases.

Of the 12 cases, 8 involved snooping on current or past lovers or spouses. One analyst said he queried the number of his foreign-national girlfriend “out of curiosity.” Another did the same, he said, because he wanted to see if his main squeeze was “involved with any [local] government officials or other activities that might get [him] in trouble.”

Another discovered a foreign phone number on her husband’s cell phone and queried it to see if he had cheated. “The tasking,” the letter says, “resulted in voice collection of her husband.”

Another queried six e-mail addresses that belonged to his ex, later testifying, as the letter paraphrases it, that “he wanted to practice on the system and had decided to use his former girlfriend’s” addresses to do so.

In 5 of the 12 cases, the employee resigned before being disciplined. In 1 instance, the employee retired before being disciplined, and in another the worker retired before the investigation had been finalized.

Half the cases were referred to the US Department of Justice (1 of those was declined by the DOJ), and in 2 other instances, records were insufficient to determine if the case had been passed on to the Justice Department. None of the workers were prosecuted.

One “received a one-year letter of reprimand (prohibiting promotions, awards, and within-grade increases) and a 10 day suspension without pay. The subject’s pending permanent change-of-station assignment was cancelled, and his provision recommendation was withdrawn.”
One “received a reduction in grade, 45 days restriction, 45 days extra duty, and half pay for two months. It was recommended that the subject not be given a security clearance.”
One “received a reduction in rank, 45 days extra duty, and half pay for two months. The member’s access to classified information was revoked.”
One’s “database access and access to classified information were suspended.”
One “received a written reprimand.”

The NSA’s phone-call tracking system sucks up metadata — what numbers were called from what number, how long the calls lasted, and so on.

The NSA has made a point of specifying that it does not routinely listen in on Americans’ phone calls. Still, some have pointed out that metadata can potentially tell you quite a lot.

Here’s Ellard’s Letter In Full, Should You Want To Dream Up Further Details And Construct A Cloak-And-Dagger Melodrama Or Two (Or Simply Reflect On The Powerful Pull Of Jealousy, And Curiosity):

NSA (Loveint Scandal) Channels Agency’s Enormous Eavesdropping Power To Spy On Love Interests (#NSAlovepoems, #NSAromcom)

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