The National Security Agency and FBI improperly searched and disseminated raw intelligence on Americans, say newly declassified memos, which also fault the agencies for failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts. The NSA says the Obama-era missteps amount to less than 1 percent of the phone numbers and email addresses intercepted. But critics say the memos undercut the intelligence community's claim that it has robust privacy protections in place.
From The Hill:
The government admitted improperly searching NSA's foreign intercept data on multiple occasions, including one instance in which an analyst ran the same search query about an American “every work day” for a period between 2013 and 2014.
There also were several instances in which Americans' unmasked names were improperly shared inside the intelligence community without being redacted, a violation of the so-called minimization procedures that President Obama loosened in 2011 that are supposed to protect an Americans' identity from disclosure when they are intercepted without a warrant. Numerous times improperly unmasked information about Americans had to be recalled and purged after the fact, the memos stated.
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