NSA Releases IG Reports on Possibly Illegal Agency Activities
On December 23, the NSA released a set of redacted reports detailing “intelligence activities . . . that [it has] reason to believe may be unlawful or contrary to Executive order or Presidential directive,” reports which had been submitted to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) pursuant to Executive Order 12333.
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On December 23, the NSA released a set of redacted reports detailing “intelligence activities . . . that [it has] reason to believe may be unlawful or contrary to Executive order or Presidential directive,” reports which had been submitted to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) pursuant to Executive Order 12333. The declassification includes quarterly reports spanning from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013, as well as four annual reports spanning from 2007 through 2010. Included in the reports are overviews of oversight activities conducted by NSA’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of the General Counsel; descriptions of signals intelligence activities affecting certain protected categories of information; and accounts of specific incidents that may have been unlawful or in contravention of applicable policies. According to the NSA, much of the content describes unintentional technical or human error, but there are some instances of intentional misuse too. A longer post on the contents of the release will follow shortly.
Jodie C. Liu formerly researched national security issues at the Brookings Institution as a Ford Foundation Law School Fellow and has worked at the Open Society Foundations in Budapest, Hungary. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2015 and summa cum laude from Columbia College in 2012, with honors in economics.
