The Washington Post was given documents by Edward Snowden that reveal that the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds and violated privacy rules "thousands of times each year" since receiving expanded powers in 2008.
The report was dated May 2012 and it mentioned that there had been 2,776 violations within the preceding one year period. The cause of the violations reported in the internal audit provided by Snowden run from benign typographical errors and simple mistakes to obvious and intentional abuses of the law, according to the Washington Post.
"Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure," the Post article said. "The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders."
The NSA gave a statement to the Washington Post in which they said that they try to discover problems "at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down."
"We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line," an anonymous NSA official told the Washington Post. "You can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day. You look at a number in absolute terms that looks big, and when you look at it in relative terms, it looks a little different."
The number of violations that occur within the entire NSA surveillance problem is likely far higher than the one reported in the audit; the audit only covers surveillance done from the agency's Fort Meade headquarters and other Washington facilities, according to the Washington Post.
One of the reasons that violations occurred is completely unpreventable. It is impossible for current surveillance technology to determine if a foreign cell phone has entered the United States, according to the Washington Post.
"We take each report seriously, investigate the matter, address the issue, constantly look for trends, and address them as well - all as a part of NSA's internal oversight and compliance efforts," John DeLong, the NSA's director of compliance, told the BBC in response to the documents released by the Washington Post.
The full documents can be seen here.
