Spies in love: NSA surveillance abuses.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

AFTER a report in August revealed more than 3,000 violations of privacy rules by employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) in a one-year period, NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong hurried to reassure reporters that only "a couple of" those infractions were willful. Pressed to clarify about what happened in those cases, the NSA admitted that it knew about several instances where employees were using the agency's incredible spying power to check in on the communications of overseas love interests.

The agency jokingly refers to these violations as LOVEINT, a play on the operation names for HUMINT (human intelligence) and SIGINT (signal intelligence). Backers of the NSA's controversial digital surveillance practices were inclined to brush off concerns about these "isolated incidents."

"Clearly, any case of noncompliance is unacceptable, but these small numbers of cases do not change my view that NSA...