Originally published September 3 2013
Revealed: NSA employees used government surveillance technology to spy on love partners
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) In the intelligence world, there are a number of acronyms describing the kind of intel that spy agencies gather.
For example, there is "ELINT" - electronic intelligence - and "HUMINT" - human intelligence.
Now, some analysts at the National Security Agency have invented a new one: "LOVEINT."
What's that, you ask? Well, that is the gathering of intelligence on a girlfriend or boyfriend.
Who believes the NSA has stopped all of its spying?
Yes, the NSA has hit a new low in usurpation of both the Constitution and its operational mandate, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper:
Staff working at America's National Security Agency - the eavesdropping unit that was revealed to have spied on millions of people - have used the technology to spy on their lovers.
Dianne Feinstein, a senator 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. The spying was not within the U.S., and was carried out when one of the lovers was abroad.
Sure. And Americans are supposed to believe that - why?
The Associated Press reported that only a single NSA employee has been disciplined for using the globe's most powerful spy agency to check up on a lover.
And Britain's Independent added that the NSA "said on Friday that a number of its analysts 'knowingly and deliberately' exceeded its surveillance authority on occasion over the past ten years and that those involved were disciplined.
"These incidents ... in most instances did not involve an American's information," Feinstein has said in response to the revelations. "I have been informed by the NSA that disciplinary action has been taken, and I am reviewing each of these incidents in detail."
In a recent interview with reporters, the agency's director of compliance, John DeLong, assured us that these abuses "are taken very seriously."
"When we make mistakes, we detect, we correct and we report," he said - unless, of course, a federal court rules that the agency's overly broad theft of tens of millions of Americans' metadata is occurring.
More from the Independent:
The Agency said that none of the abuses involved violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or the USA Patriot Act, laws which former systems analyst Edward Snowden revealed the agency had broken with his leaks of classified information.
No one believes there will be 'reform'
So, neither one of these laws addresses the illegality of spying on a lover - without a court order, and without probable cause? As I recall, these laws do not delineate between "lover" and "ordinary Americans." All American citizens not suspected of being involved in threats to U.S. national security are covered under these laws - there are no "exceptions" for LOVEINT. So how are these instances not violations of the FISA or Patriot Act?
No doubt there is much more to this story than is being reported, but there is good news: more Americans are becoming aware of just how big a violation it is of U.S. law and the Constitution for this agency to conduct operations willy-nilly against American citizens.
What's more, fewer and fewer believe that President Obama's announced "reforms" of the agency are legitimate - especially since he has defended the spying so vigorously since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA's operations and spying programs as well as the cooperation of the largest U.S. telecoms.
Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk
http://www.nydailynews.com
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