The New York Times has details about the NSA’s new email collection system named Pinwale which has been used to collect not only foreign email conversations but domestic ones, too.
As a former cryptographer, this seriously disturbs me. As I said before, it used to be that the folks at the NSA took their responsibility to protect Americans and their privacy seriously. It’s a shame that that’s apparently changed.
The danger in speaking of NSA as a collective is the (mis)perception that every NSA employee abuses this e-mail collection system. However, I venture that the vast majority of employees who access the system do not care to circumvent auditing mechanisms, and it is still the case that doing so is a CEM.
There are stupid people everywhere, and a collective is often (mis)judged by the disproportionate amount of press revealing stupid people doing stupid things. Fortunately, there is a way around this rabbit hole: open accountability for all programs at the Agency. Unfortunately, policy and legal wrangling will prevent that from ever occurring.