Spying on Its Own: The NSA's Deep Bag of Tricks
Spy on US citizens? We don't do that, the American government claimed. But new NSA documents published by the Washington Post show that the intelligence service violates the law in thousands of instances. Analysts with the agency are free to pick targets as they choose.

Why The 2,776 NSA Violations Are No Big Deal
Thanks to more documents leaked by Edward Snowden, this time to the Washington Post, we learned last week that a secret May 2012 internal audit by the NSA revealed 2,776 incidents of “unauthorized” collection of information on American citizens over the previous 12 months. They are routinely breaking their own rules and covering it up. The Post article quotes an NSA spokesman assuring the paper that the NSA attempts to identify such problems “at the earliest possible moment.” But what happened to all those communications intercepted improperly in the meantime? The answer is, they were logged and stored anyway. 

NSA documents challenge Obama claim that surveillance programs ‘not abused’
The Washington Post reported on an audit and other secret documents that allegedly show the NSA broke privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times since it was granted new powers in 2008. The May 2012 audit specifically tallied 2,776 incidents from the prior year where communications were improperly gathered and handled. Some of the alleged abuses were inadvertent, stemming from typos and other errors, while others were more severe.