The Latest NSA Documents I: Introduction and the Entire Series

The latest cache of NSA documents---a group released yesterday related to errors in collection under Section 215---follows the same basic narrative pattern as the agency’s earlier release concerning implementation of Section 702. That is, it tells the story of a significant set of errors by NSA that caused factual misrepresentations to the FISA court. It tells the story of the court’s response both to the errors themselves and to the government’s reporting failures. And it tells the story of the government’s efforts over a protracted period of time to correct the failures and prevent them from happening again.

The story will, very likely, convince nearly everyone of what they believed going into it. Opponents of the NSA’s collection programs will see in it an agency whose implementation was flawed and whose representations about that implementatiom were false---again. Conversely, defenders of the agency and its activities will see errors that were by no accounts intentional, honest self-reporting of those errors when caught, vigorous oversight both by the courts and within the executive branch, and then earnest efforts to work with the court to correct those mistakes.

What follows is an overview of the documents, and the story they tell, for readers who wish to understand it in detail. It is the product of a team, different members of whom wrote different portions.

• The Latest NSA Documents II: The Crap Hits the Fan
• The Latest NSA Documents III: The Government Responds
• The Latest NSA Documents IV: Things Get Worse
• The Latest NSA Documents V: the NSA Investigates Its Metadata Compliance Problems, Takes Remedial Steps, and Reports Back to the FISC
• The Latest NSA Document VI: Non-Compliance Redux, With More DOJ