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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig: And the violations that are documented in this memorandum from the NSA-- remember, we're only seeing a partial window—we're seeing what the NSA headquarters reported in a year's time, not what all the other NSA satellite offices offered, but in those instances they broke some of the privacy rules, and they broke some other rules that have to do with foreign intelligence gathering. The most striking, probably, example that people are taken by is that there were a series of phone call records stored
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig continued: from the Washington, DC. area code-- zip code, forgive me, area code 202, and this was a glitch, essentially, it was because a switch misread 202 for 20, which is the country code for Egypt. We are allowed to collect a lot of records about foreign communications, but when you start collecting a lot of Washington, DC. phone records, it's another story.
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig: What's unclear from the document, because it's really an NSA internal audit, is how many of these were reported to the court. A portion of them should have been that have to do with FISA authorities, when you're looking into Americans' records and we honestly don't have the rest of the chain to know what was reported. What we do know is there are thousands of them and that the Obama administration has assured us and the public before this came out that it happens infrequently, once in a while.
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Warner: now, equally startling was your companion piece, what the district court judge, Reggie Walton, said to you about the FISA court's authority when you asked him about this. Explain that a little more. Leonnig: so he's the chief judge of the secret spy court, the foreign intelligence surveillance court, that is supposed to be the lynchpin for the checks and balances on our government spying programs. It takes it really seriously. It does everything in a classified, secret
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig: skiff, but it's a diligent careful court. What he essentially said was there are practical limitations on what we can do and we must trust the government to report to us these violation because we can't independently, with our resources, ferret that out. Warner: and why can't the court ferret that out, verifying the information independently? Leonnig: well, there are the obvious issues of resources. I mean, this is a court with a number of judges who all have plenty of
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig continued: busy dockets themselves -- Reggie Walton has a very busy docket himself-- and they have a very busy staff of 5 lawyers. Warner: For the whole court? Leonnig Yes, So those lawyers receive the information about the compliance allegations, they review them, they elevate the most serious ones to a judge, if it warrants it and that's a very practical reason why it would be impossible to be policing and looking behind the government when they report thousands of violations.
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig: Congress has a lot more in the way of staff for reviewing. Do we know the degree which they look over it? We don't. I did find it interesting last night when we asked Senator Feinstein for her comment, ands you know, Senator Feinstein has been a pretty arch supporter-- Warner: a member of the Intelligence Committee. Leonnig: exactly, and a very strong ally for the government and NSA in supporting these efforts. She said that she feels the subsector, subsection of violation that she doesn't have authority over, she should now, perhaps, gain authority to review some of those that have to do with foreign communications
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig: i think this will add fuel to the concept that we shouldn’t all feel safely assured, that violations are rarely happening and that oversight is robust and full. As for whether a privacy advocate should be added to the court, that's really not my role. That's one of the things that's been mentioned on the hill. There are other people who have raised really good practical questions about how in the dead of night a privacy advocate can
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Carol Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
KRCB 08/16/2013
Leonnig continued: be summoned to weigh in on whether or not some collection can take place. That's something for others to hammer out. But it clearly, these two things together, raise questions about the assurances we've received from the administration.
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