NSA Officers Sometimes Spy on Love Interests

NSA Officers Sometimes Spy on Love Interests

blogs.wsj.com

National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Some NSA officers used their power to spy on their wives and girlfriends.

They say it did not happen very often. But it was common enough to get its own spycraft label called "LOVEINT"

The NSA says most of the violations were self reported and the employees were punished either with an administrative action or termination.

How many times did they do it and not report themselves.

Does this surprise anyone? I mean dang just hire a private eye like everyone else

blogs.wsj.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by goou111
Nothing surprising about it. Dudes are going to check up on their wives and girlfriends (not all but A LOT). If they are working in a field that affords them the opportunity to be able to do a smash up job of it then of course they will take advantage of that. It's not right but it's part of a lot of people's psychological make-up to do stuff like that.

Does anyone believe blackmail isn't used to silence people..... If push comes to shove, getting caught in a "love interest" is at least forgivable...selling out your Country isn't...

The 'Love' angle took down Petraeus (CIA Director, and General U.S. Army)

[ Nosy bastards ! ]

Where ever power exisit there are people who will abuse it.

Even if all the listening in is "working" and keeping people "safe", do we want these powers in the hands of people who have proven time and again irresponsible with the power they have.

How many people who had the power to very easily 'surveill' people they know -- especially people they were hot for -- would have the discipline to not do it? Many. But not all. Human nature.

Knowing the love some people have for money makes it that much easier to imagine the extent of abuse too.

Just a little peek, nobody will find out!

Originally posted by goou111
Some NSA officers used their power to spy on their wives and girlfriends.

Or their husbands and boyfriends, presumably.

Gives a whole new meaning to "person of interest", doesn't it?

Originally posted by RedCairo
How many people who had the power to very easily 'surveill' people they know -- especially people they were hot for -- would have the discipline to not do it? Many. But not all. Human nature.

I would probably do it lol. But I'm not an NSA officer and I think anyone who is given that power and responsibility should have the discipline to follow the rules..

That being said obviously the NSA as a whole can't follow the rules so why would we expect anything less lol

reply to post by xuenchen

The 'Love' angle took down Petraeus (CIA Director, and General U.S. Army)

And there's been speculation that they had something on Justice Roberts - used to rule Obamacare constitutional. NSA is "conveniently" a huge bribery tool and pretty much nothing more.

I think the NSA just needs to start a nationwide matchmaking service at this point. If they have any hope of brushing up their image with the general population, they better start finding us perfect dates.

reply to post by goou111


My Dad is a retired cop in Florida. He says when he first joined the force, he'd do background checks on everybody because he was curious. Then he started finding out too much information and eventually he didn't want to know!

reply to post by littled16


That's the spirit. Nooooo, I would never check up on my wife with government funds? What? Nooo, well maybe just to see if she was okay, maybe a little... I love her

Yeah, I'm sure there are a handful of NSA guys with a few dozen "love interests."

It's called mass stalking.

They probably rank the women of the country like Zuckerberg at Harvard and sell hidden cam vids to the Saudi royals.

reply to post by goou111

Does this surprise anyone?

...

Originally posted by PatrickGarrow17
Yeah, I'm sure there are a handful of NSA guys with a few dozen "love interests."

It's called mass stalking.

They probably rank the women of the country like Zuckerberg at Harvard and sell hidden cam vids to the Saudi royals.

edit on 8/24/2013 by PatrickGarrow17 because: (no reason given)

Really, you never know. There's a difference between being able to find out "everything" and what the NSA allegedly has at their disposal. The closest comparison I would say that it may have is a RAT (remote administration tool). RATs are used and abused on a daily basis to essentially spy on others who, through ignorance and misfortune, happened to download something with a RAT program embedded in it. Entire forums exist where "owners" of these RAT infected pcs can swap or even sell their "possessions". If there is a corollary for that kind of behavior outside of the NSA, then there's probably going to be a few within it that are going to be the same way. On one level, they'd probably be more mature about it because it would be their job on the line if detected but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have footage of a person who is totally unaware that a third party may be watching.

More than the NSA have this power. Telcoms can do it too. Here in my town we have one ISP, like most companies they handle the cell phone and tv service for the area as well. I know a guy that works for them, just a low level employee that answers phones. At his desk is their internal tool which provides near limitless information on their customers. They can see the MAC address of every connected device, what connection it's connected to (pinpointing location), and track what connections it has been on at what times. What this means in practice is that if a persons phone jumps onto wifi, they can be tracked around town.

Another thing they can do is know what sites each person has gone to, on which device, and how often they were at each webpage.

My personal favorite though, is if it's a cell phone through them, they have access to the phone. This guy I know will randomly turn on the camera and mic and spy on people just to see what he can find out. Among other things, he used this ability to track his girlfriend around town and keep tabs on everywhere she went and who she spoke to, so that he could be sure she wasn't cheating.

That's just a low level person at an ISP. Think about what the NSA has, since they're collecting all of that same information, and then more on top of it.

I've never met someone who hasn't googled an Ex or an old flame, someone new.
Ive looked in on mine, man do people change!

Either way, gonna go with unanswered prayers. Not gonna hold that one against anyone.

Good to know they're human after all