Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Everybody saw this coming.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

When we show up, we win.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

No Justins, No Peace

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

We still have time to mess this up!

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

You are here: Home / Politics / War on Terror / War on Terror aka GSAVE® / Hell Of A Christmas News Dump, Fellas

Hell Of A Christmas News Dump, Fellas

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Merry Christmas from the NSA.  It seems the Puzzle Palace has 12 years’ worth of presents to give to Americans.

The NSA, responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, released a series of required quarterly and annual reportsto the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013.

The heavily-redacted reports include examples of data on Americans being e-mailed to unauthorized recipients, stored in unsecured computers and retained after it was supposed to be destroyed, according to the documents. They were posted on the NSA’s website at around 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

In a 2012 case, for example, an NSA analyst “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting,” according to one report. The analyst “has been advised to cease her activities,” it said.

Other unauthorized cases were a matter of human error, not intentional misconduct.

Last year, an analyst “mistakenly requested” surveillance “of his own personal identifier instead of the selector associated with a foreign intelligence target,” according to another report.

In 2012, an analyst conducted surveillance “on a U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization because the analyst incorrectly believed that he was authorized to query due to a potential threat,” according to the fourth-quarter report from 2012. The surveillance yielded nothing.

Two thoughts:  One, as I’ve said numerous times, it’s entirely possible to hold the position that both the NSA needs massive reform to prevent civil liberties abuses, and that Edward Snowden went about exposing these abuses in a way that damaged national security.  The ACLU on the other hand requested this information through FOIA, and got it.  No espionage or skulduggery was required, and the information clearly shows the NSA isn’t following its own procedures.  This was the right way to get evidence of these massive abuses and does so in a manner that’s both responsible and powerful.

And that brings me to Thought Two: please remember that Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul, killed legislation that would have increased oversight and civil liberties protections involving the NSA just last month, so the opportunity to do something about this was killed by the GOP.  They’re not interested in reforming the NSA, they’re interested in allowing these abuses to continue, and the next Congress will do precisely nothing to rein this garbage in.

It’s pretty rancid for a Christmas Day news dump, but there you have it.

Reader Interactions

88Comments

  1. 1.

    Ruckus

    NSA, always ready to bring a little cheer into our lives.
    Their timing sucks, they don’t seem to be very good at their jobs(unless their jobs are to get paid to lie), and at least I for one feel like the money spent could be put to much better use.

  2. 2.

    srv

    that Edward Snowden went about exposing these abuses in a way that damaged national security.

    You have a problem with Ed or gross shenanigans performed by his mouthpiece?

    These ‘reports’ didn’t exist before Snowden. So IDK how you think these would be linky if there hadn’t been any leaky.

  3. 3.

    RepubAnon

    The Republicans don’t want to stop the NSA’s abuses, they merely want to restrict the monitoring to data related to their political rivals.

  5. 5.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    There’s a group of folk who’s job it is to oversee these agencies, but they’re off on a series of snipe hunts(Benghazi, IRS, Fast n’ Furious…).

  8. 8.

    Cervantes

    @srv:

    These ‘reports’ didn’t exist before Snowden.

    If you read the article, or even just the excerpt above, you will find that the reports released yesterday “cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013.”

  9. 9.

    srv

    @Cervantes: You seem unable to grasp two statements are both true.

    Perhaps you and Zandar can provide a link to these reports pre Snowden. Our you could stop snortng eggnog.

  11. 11.

    mai naem mobile

    OT, I don’t remember seeing this on BJ but Darrel Issa had a document dump this week finding nothing wrong in the IRS investigation. Too hard to do the linky on my cell but the article was in the Washington Post.

  13. 13.

    Spinwheel

    You cannot be this willfully stupid.

    The ACLU would not have been able to ask for these documents without the documents Snowden provided, because the public did not know these illegal and unconstitutional programs existed before he exposed them.

    You can argue about Snowden being hero or villain all you want to, but to say that the ACLU would have requested anything at all (or that we would have any idea of the extent of the12 years of Bush and Obama spying on us for that matter) without Edward Snowden may be the most moronic thing Balloon Juice has ever posted.

    Absolute idiocy.

  19. 19.

    Tommy

    @Baud: A Samsung tablet. My brother and I are both tech nerds and we communicate via our mobile devices. Mom is like can I communicate with you that way? Been asking that for a year to two plus. Figured I’d give her that chance. I am worried that when she learns to text me she’ll do it a hundred times a day, but mom.

  22. 22.

    Cervantes

    @srv:

    @Cervantes: You seem unable to grasp two statements are both true. Perhaps you and Zandar can provide a link to these reports pre Snowden. Our you could stop snortng eggnog.

    “Two statements are both true”? “Eggnog”? What on earth are you talking about? Linked above and again here are the reports released yesterday. Kindly take a look at the dates of each one, then explain your statement that “[these] ‘reports’ didn’t exist before Snowden.” Thanks.

  23. 23.

    Tommy

    @Baud: I have a Samsung Tab 4 and that is what I got her. One of the most stunning pieces of hardware I’ve ever gotten and I’ve been on a computer since the early 80s. I often joke that if I didn’t need to write a paper for college it would be all the computer I’d need. Just surf the web. Email. Again all the computer I’d need. I play to finish my teaching of how to use it next week when she is over but she can do anything she wants on it. Watch her soaps. Troll eBay. You name it.

  26. 26.

    Tommy

    @schrodinger’s cat: I don’t know. I went to the Google/Chrome laptop. I went to it because I have almost everything on my phone and tablet, both Andriod and Google. On my desktop I can run all those apps. So I have one interface between my to do list and many other apps. I could not be happier. Everything is synced across my desktop, laptop, phone, and tablet.

  27. 27.

    mai naem mobile

    @Baud: imho, get a cheap brand name refurb. I’ve seen 7″ ones for $99 online. We’ve had a few in my extended family and they all seem to stop working within a year or so. Nobody treats their stuff roughly and has the cases etc., i think its just the product. I spent $500 on the 10″ google nexus and would not do it again.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    @Tommy:

    What size? How’s the resolution? I tried this off-brand tablet, but reading on it gave me eye strain for some reason (even though the stated resolution didn’t seem bad — 1200 x 800).

  30. 30.

    Heliopause

    This was the right way to get evidence of these massive abuses

    No, this was obviously the “wrong” way (not really “wrong” just vastly less effective). It got dumped on Xmas eve and nobody will pay the slightest bit of attention to it, outside of a few blogs.

    To get paid attention to, you have to be disruptive. A protest that isn’t disruptive isn’t a protest at all, as all the anti-police-brutality demonstrators well know, but you apparently do not.

    Snowden did his thing in a maximally disruptive way, as do the anti-police-brutality protesters, because he and they are much smarter than you are.

  32. 32.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @schrodinger’s cat: I just got a new laptop yesterday, as my old one is dying. It came with Windows 8, which sucks. Fortunately, I found something called Classic Shell that gave me my Start Menu back.

    I can’t figure out why Microsoft alternates between perfectly good operating systems that I like (XP; 7) with steaming piles of shit (Vista; 8). They know how to make a good OS; they just insist on making us replace it with crap every so often.

  34. 34.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Baud: What are you going to use the tablet for? I think tablets are best for reading magazines. I have a Logitech blue tooth keyboard that I use with my IPad. I much prefer it than typing on screen. I find that I use the IPad less than my laptop and phone when I am at home but it is good as a travel companion.

    ETA: Do you know when MS is going to release Windows 10?

  35. 35.

    Joey Giraud

    “Edward Snowden went about exposing these abuses in a way that damaged national security. ”

    Our precious national security.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Balloon Juice, of course!

    In addition, web browsing and reading mostly (which is why I care about resolution and eye strain), and the occasional video download. They make Windows 8 tablets now, so if I went in that direction, I could also use it as a mini-computer and for work related purposes. If I went the ipad route, I’d load a bunch of apps on it.

    ETA: The comment I was responding to disappeared. I hope schrodinger’s cat didn’t just get raptured.

    ETA2: @schrodinger’s cat: There you are.

  38. 38.

    Tommy

    @Baud: I got the larger one 10.1. I don’t know the resolution, but it is high-end. I just started needing to use glasses, I am 45, and I don’t need them on this device. I feel very comfortable saying if you bought one you’d never come back and say “Tommy you are an asshole for suggesting it.” It is an amazing little thing.

  39. 39.

    mai naem mobile

    @schrodinger’s cat: don’t know about that particular laptop but i hate windows 8. Hate it with a passion. If i wanted a tablet i would have gotten a tablet. Make sure you play with windows 8 at a big box store or on a friends computer before you get it. Way different from old windows.

  40. 40.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Baud: What are you going to use the tablet for? I think tablets are best for reading magazines. I have a Logitech blue tooth keyboard that I use with my IPad. I much prefer it than typing on screen. I find that I use the IPad less than my laptop and phone when I am at home but it is good as a travel companion.

    ETA: No Windows 9?

  44. 44.

    Tommy

    @Baud: You will get a kick out of this. I bought about a $3,000 Widows system. No monitor. Just the computer. I didn’t want anything other then the darn computer. Windows 7. This was 3-4 months ago. Very easy order.

  47. 47.

    mai naem mobile

    @Baud: my niece has a regular ipad which she likes. i like my google nexus – i just don’t see the point of spending $500 on something with a 12-18 mo shelf life when i can get the refurb for $200 or less which will probably have about the same shelf life. The only other one that I’ve seen that interests me is the ASUS transformer which looks like a big version of a slider phone.

  48. 48.

    Tommy

    @Baud: Gosh I am not sure the size of my Samsung phone but it is large. I have not upgraded because they don’t offer the size anymore. I got the much larger tablet because I found no use for it, I could just use my phone. That seemed like a waste to me. I’d never go to my tablet. It is almost a small laptop. But it is a lot bigger than my phone. If I want to read I pull it out.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @mai naem mobile:

    I hear you. That’s the main reason I shy away from Apple products. An ipad mini 2 is about $300, however. The main reason I’m thinking about it is the screen quality and resolution.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    @Tommy:

    Right. That’s the other option I’m thinking about — forgoing the tablet and just getting one of those bigger-screen phones like the Note 4.

  52. 52.

    Tommy

    @Baud: Unless you need to write a ten page paper for college class, and I bet you don’t, the phone is all you need. I am stunned by what I can do on it. Commenting here, not easy. But all other communication very easy.

  53. 53.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Baud: Apple products are usually too spendy for me but I got an Ipad2 because I had some bonus miles I needed to cash, before they expired. Ipad2 was one of the options. Its great for surfing the web and reading magazines, especially NatGeo.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Tommy:

    I find commenting here relatively easy on my phone. Not as easy as a laptop, but not bad. But I don’t find the phone that great for reading, especially long pieces, and I’d like to read a bit more than I do. A larger screen for video would be nice also.

  56. 56.

    Karen in GA

    I got a new laptop just before Thanksgiving. Windows 8.1.

    Very often people complain about new software or operating systems only because they don’t yet understand them. I tell you what, I more or less figured out how to work with Windows 8.1 pretty quickly — and even with that, this OS just absolutely sucks. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I had a laptop with Windows ME.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Tommy:

    Thanks. I’m familiar with pocket. My issue is that I have a slightly older phone with a smaller screen size and not -the-best resolution. I think I’d be more inclined to read if I had a larger, better screen. And a lot of what I want to read is in pdf form, not just news articles, and pdfs are hard to do on a small screen.

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    That’s my sense as well. Really good products, but you have to pay for it.

  58. 58.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    @mai naem mobile:

    My wife is still rocking her first gen ipad, which I got immediately upon it’s release. I still have my early second gen ipad.

    They both work just fine.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    They’re not interested in reforming the NSA, they’re interested in allowing these abuses to continue, and the next Congress will do precisely nothing to rein this garbage in.

    Every last one of them (to include the racist shitstain Paul) is an authoritarian asshole who only express outrage over the mechanisms of the police state when a Democrat is in the White House.

    Otherwise, it’s look out, Nelly, bar the door!

  61. 61.

    Gvg

    @Tommy: Tell your mom to google dancing dog show. The AKC has it as a competition category http://youtu.be/n936e073z58 this one is old from at least 2006 but this is a newer better copy video. I had a golden when my aunt sent ithis to me. There are lots of talented trainers out there.

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    Not So Adept

    @schrodinger’s cat

    Strong reason (as I understand it) for skipping 9 in Windows is that there are programs and applications that can misconstrue it as Win95 or Win98.

    Sort of a mini-Y2k dilemma, but with concrete glitching problems.

    Don’t have the link right at hand, and just taking a tiny break from the kitchen, but there is an app which apparently runs a Windows 7 environment on iPads. Videos about what and how on YouTube.

  65. 65.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Edward Snowden went about exposing these abuses in a way that damaged national security.

    That never bothered me. What bothered me was being fed wildly misrepresented story after wildly misrepresented story, over and over for months. Every time I went and examined the source material it didn’t say what the articles tried (and convinced) people it said. 4000 incorrect entries in a search engine became 4000 times the NSA targeted Americans to spy on. Anonymous tips became fabricated evidence backgrounds. Snowden’s being a jackass was immaterial. I don’t like systematic lying, especially from people who are supposedly on my side.

  66. 66.

    seabe

    it’s entirely possible to hold the position that both the NSA needs massive reform to prevent civil liberties abuses, and that Edward Snowden went about exposing these abuses in a way that damaged national security.

    Oh give me a break. What’s wrong with Snowden and GG is the drip drip leaking, where they are the new gatekeepers of information that SHOULD belong to the public. In other words, he’s become no different than the NSA itself.

    In any case, all this shows is that every black box Agency should be destroyed, especially the CIA.

  67. 67.

    Les Nessman

    WTF, this wasn’t an open thread about fucking buying laptops.
    Oh wait, I guess it was looking at the comment stream.

  69. 69.

    Kylroy

    @Heliopause: By that logic, Al Qaeda has us all lapped because, boy howdy, do they know how to be disruptive and get attention. You need to have a plan for what you’re going to do once you’ve *got* that attention: if that plan is “very visibly travel to America’s biggest rivals/frenemies with a bunch of classified data”, you need a better one. Assange managed to find a comfortably neutral country to shelter him, why was Snowden making a beeline for Beijing and then Moscow?

  70. 70.

    Hobbes

    No espionage or skulduggery was required, and the information clearly shows the NSA isn’t following its own procedures. This was the right way to get evidence of these massive abuses and does so in a manner that’s both responsible and powerful.

    It’s like we were reading different reports. The NSA reports clearly show that the NSA completely complies with the law to the best of its ability. According to the reports written by the NSA there were no “massive abuses”.

  71. 71.

    A Humble Lurker

    @Heliopause:
    This is not necessarilly true. If you’re incredibly disruptive an ignorant public can write you off as a child throwing a tantrum, or a cloudcuckoolander or someone who’s just trying to get attention, which is sometimes the case, actually.

    Just yelling at the top of your lungs is a guarantee everyone will hear, but just because everyone will hear doesn’t mean everyone will listen. Hell, you might just make them plug their ears and walk away from you faster.

    Also, I would not in any universe compare the police brutality protesters to Snowden in favor of Snowden.

  72. 72.

    Ruckus

    @Hobbes:
    Would you like to buy a bridge? One owner, unfortunately not low mileage, needs paint and some other minor attention, but I’m willing to let it go cheap. Unless that was snark and if so then I’m afraid that the price will be dramatically higher.

  73. 73.

    Procopius

    The ACLU on the other hand requested this information through FOIA, and got it. No espionage or skulduggery was required, and the information clearly shows the NSA isn’t following its own procedures.

    Well, the counterfactual can never be proven. I feel sure Snowden believed sincerely that, in view of the (non-)response to his complaints within the chain of command, this information would never have been known unless he did it his way. Would the ACLU have made the FOIA request if they had not known about the secrets Snowden revealed? I only worked briefly at the very lowest level of the chain, but I have no confidence at all in the “integrity” of the people in charge of this fustercluck. They are all venal and corrupt. IMHO.

  74. 74.

    Procopius

    @Cervantes: Maybe that ought to be phrased: “These reports purport ot cover the period …” I used to submit reports when I was in the Army. I don’t see any reason to believe reports from known liars when there is no way to verify their completeness or accuracy. I believe every report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Bank (well, most, if not all), the Bureau of Economic Research and the Department of Agriculture (because of the wonderful stuff they published during the Depression and World War II). Any other report from the Government, especially the military or the “security” services, I try to maintain a reasonable skepticism. You really believe there was only a single instance of unauthorized surveillance over 12 years? Really?

  75. 75.

    Procopius

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym:

    They know how to make a good OS; they just insist on making us replace it with crap every so often.

    Well, they try to. Lots of businesses are still running Windows XP, and I’ve read predictions that they’re going to hang on to Windows 7 the same way, unless MS really does Windows 10 right. I would never have gone to Windows 7 (which I now love) except the shop which built my current desktop installed it — I had planned to install Ubuntu, but now I’m sticking with this.

  76. 76.

    Procopius

    @Kylroy: There were two monks walking along a road when they came to a stream with no bridge over it, only a shallow ford. A woman was standing by the stream, crying. The older monk asked what was wrong. She explained she needed to cross the stream to go to her father’s house, but she was afraid of the water. So the monk picked her up in his arms and carried her across the river. Now it is utterly and absolutely forbidden for a monk to touch a woman. The monks continued along the road for several miles, and finally the younger one burst out, “How could you defile yourself by picking that woman up in your arms?” The older monk replied, “Are you still carrying that woman around? I put her down back by the stream.”

  77. 77.

    Cervantes

    @Procopius:

    @Cervantes: Maybe that ought to be phrased: “These reports purport ot cover the period …”

    You’re allowing for the possibility that the NSA is misrepresenting the dates of those reports, i. e., that the “real-time” date stamps on the reports are not genuine? Sure, it’s possible.

    Any other report from the Government, especially the military or the “security” services, I try to maintain a reasonable skepticism.

    Sounds reasonable.

    You really believe there was only a single instance of unauthorized surveillance over 12 years? Really?

    If you check, I think you’ll find that I was merely querying the notion that the reports released on Wednesday “didn’t exist before Snowden.”

  78. 78.

    Hunter

    @srv: If I’m understanding you right, that was my thought: if not for Snowden, would anyone be looking? And if they did, how much stonewalling would they encounter?

    Sometimes we need to have things blow up in our faces.

  79. 79.

    Spinwheel

    And Zandar’s public flogging continues.

    Much like Andrew Sullivan and race (or Trig Palin) there are just some subjects people cannot post about without looking like morons.

    For Zandar it’s anything involving Edward Snowden.

    Maybe this time you’ll have learned your lesson.

  81. 81.

    Kylroy

    @Procopius: Yes, I know, it’s hard to deal with the fact that you’re so much more enlightened than the rest of us. But if you want anything done in a democracy, you need to make the people at large care. And if you want them to care about the government’s secrets, you don’t do with those secrets exactly what a spy looking to make a fortune would do.

  83. 83.

    Kylroy

    @Cervantes: Parable was nice. I assume what he was going for was “get over how the information was originally released”, which as far as that goes covers all things Snowden, ever.

    My objection is that Snowden ensured that everything that comes from his efforts can immediately and flippantly be dismissed as “oh, that guy who ran off to Russia after stealing a bunch of American secrets?” It looks fucking awful, and when it’s the first time the vast majority of the public is looking at the issue at all, appearances do matter. FWIW, I’m fine with everything else he did, just pissed that he poisoned the well with incredibly poor followup.

  84. 84.

    gratuitous

    If the revelation of intelligence abuses damages our national security, perhaps our intelligence agencies shouldn’t be abusing their discretion and authority? It’s been a truism for millennia that the truth will out, and that there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

    Snowden didn’t endanger our national security, our own intelligence agencies endangered our national security.

  85. 85.

    burnspbesq

    FOIA works. All journalists and bloggers should know how to use it, and should use it far more often than they do.

  86. 86.

    burnspbesq

    @Spinwheel:

    If you’re the one doing the teaching, the only lesson that will be learned is “ignore that asshole Pinwheel.” Which I will now do.

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