It doesn’t happen a lot but often enough that there’s a word for it
by digby
We have HUMINT, or human intelligence gathered from agents. We have SIGINT or signals intelligence. And now we have LOVEINT or NSA analysts occasionally reading the emails of ex-lovers. It doesn’t happen a lot, the NSA told the WSJ, but often enough that there is a word for it.
There’s another violation we all heard about way back in 2009 but which doesn’t appear to be of much concern to anyone.
I wonder if it’s called GOPINT:
He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.
The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.
Yeah, I’m very sure sure it only happened that one time. The NSA and Dianne Feinstein assured us that it hardly ever happens. After they told us that it never happened at all. For years.
.