Audit Finds NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year

According to an internal audit and other top-secret documents, the National Security Agency broke privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broader authority in 2008.

The Washington Post reported that 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. The infractions range from simple typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. emails and phone calls to more serious violations of law.

The documents were provided to the Washington Post by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is currently in Russia with temporary asylum.

In one instance, the NSA decided that it didn't need to report theunintended surveillance of Americans. In 2008 there was an interception of a large number of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a quality assurance review that was not distributed to the NSAs oversight staff.

In another infraction, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some of the NSA's operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. The court ultimately ruled it unconstitutional.

The Obama administration has pledged transparency in explaining the NSA's record.

The 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 violations were unintended and many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents mentioned in the audit included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.